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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 


https://archive.org/details/medievalcitiesthOOpire_0O 


MEDIEVAL CITIES: 
THEIR ORIGINS AND THE 
REVIVAL OF TRADE 


LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD .- 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


MEDIEVAL CITIES 


THEIR ORIGINS AND THE REVIVAL OF TRADE 


BY HENRI PIRENNE 


of the University of Ghent 


TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 
BY FRANK D. HALSEY 


PRINCETON 
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 


1925 


Copyrighted 1925 Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.f. 


Printed at Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.f., U.S.A. 


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OPE 5~. ER, 


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TO PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 


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Preface 


HIS Utttle volume contains the substance of 
lectures which I delivered from October to 
December 1922 in several American universities. 
It zs an attempt to expound, in a general way, the 
economic awakening and the birth of urban civili- , 
zation in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. 
The bibliography placed at the end of the vol- 
ume will permit the reader, who may be interested 
in the subject discussed herein, to inform himself 
more precisely of the details and to verify my as- 
sertions. It would be obviously impossible, in a 
general outline such as this, to go into particulars 
or take up exceptions and anomalies, and still more 
so to give way to controversy. Here, then, will be 
found only a synthesis, the result of long years of 
study and research. 

It ¢s particularly gratifying to me to see this 
book published by the Press of a University which 
showed me so cordial a sympathy during the war, 
and to whichI am very happy to dedicate the work 
asa mark of my. profound gratitude. 





II. 
III. 
LY; 
Vv. 
VI. 
VII. 


VIII. 


Contents 


THE MEDITERRANEAN 


1 


THE NINTH CENTURY MAbomt (hualgnyors 


CITY ORIGINS 

THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 
THE MERCHANT CLASS 

THE MIDDLE CLASS 
MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 


CITIES AND EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


56 
78 


109 


135 
174 
221 


245 





MEDIEVAL CITIES 


Chapter I 


The Mediterranean 


HE Roman Empire, at the end of the third 
century, had one outstanding general char- 
acteristic: it was an essentially Mediter- 
ranean commonwealth. Virtually all of its territory 
lay within the watershed of that great land-locked 
sea; the distant frontiers of the Rhine, the Danube, 
the Euphrates and the Sahara, may be regarded 
merely as an advanced circle of outer defences pro- 
tecting the approaches. 

The Mediterranean was, without question, the 
bulwark of both its political and economic unity. 
Its very existence depended on sea mastery. With- 
out that great trade route, neither the government, 
nor the defence, nor the administration of the orbis © 
romanus would have been possible. 

As the Empire grew old this fundamentally 
maritime character was, interestingly enough, not 
only preserved but was still more sharply defined. 
When the former inland capital, Rome, was aban- 
doned, its place was taken by a city which not only 


2 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


served as a capital but which was at the same tiv 
an admirable port—Constantinople. 

The Empire’s cultural development, to be sure, 
had clearly passed its peak. Population decreased, 
the spirit of enterprise waned, barbarian hordes 
commenced to threaten the frontiers, and the in- 
creasing expenses of the government, fighting for 
its very life, brought in their train a fiscal system 
which more and more enslaved men to the State. | 
Nevertheless this general deterioration does not — 
seem to have appreciably affected the shipping of 
the Mediterranean. It continued to be active and 
well-sustained, in marked contrast with the grow- 
ing apathy that characterized the continental pro- — 
vinces.. Trade continued to keep the East and the 
West in close contact with each other. There was © 
no interruption to the intimate commercial relations _ 
between those diverse climes bathed by one and | 
the same sea. Both manufactured and natural prod- 
ucts were still extensively dealt in: textiles from © 
Constantinople, Edessa, Antioch, and Alexandria; | 
wines, oils and spices from Syria; papyrus from 
Egypt; wheat from Egypt, Africa, and Spain; 
and wines from Gaul and Italy. There was even a © 
reform of the monetary system based on the gold © 
solidus, which served materially to encourage com- ; 
mercial operations by giving them the benefit of © 


. 


i 









THE MEDITERRANEAN __. a 


an excellent currency, universally adopted as an 
_ instrument of exchange and as’a means of quoting 
ces. 

Of the two great regions of the Empire, the East 
_and the West, the first far surpassed the second, 
both in superiority of civilization and in a much 
_ higher level of economic development. At the be- 
_ ginning of the fourth century there were no longer 


_ of the export trade was in Syria and in Asia Minor, 
and here also was concentrated, in particular, the 
| textile industry for which the whole Roman world 
was the market and for which Syrian ships were 
the carriers. 

The commercial prominence of the Syrians is 
one of the most interesting facts in the history of 
the Lower Empire.* It undoubtedly contributed 
largely to that progressive orientalization of so- 
ciety which was due eventually to end in Byzan- 
tinism. And this orientalization, of which the sea 
was the vehicle, is clear proof of the increasing im- 
portance which the Mediterranean acquired as the 
ageing Empire grew weak, gave way in the North 
| 














1P. Scheffer-Boichorst, “Zur Geschichte der Syrer im Abend- 
lande,” Mittheilungen des Instituts fur Odcestereichische Ge- 
schichtsforschung, 1885, Vol. VI, p. 521; L. Bréhier, “Les colonies 
d’Orientaux en Occident au commencement du Moyen-age,” | 
Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 1903, Vol. XII. 


_ any really great cities save in the East. The center © 


4 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


beneath the pressure of the barbarians, and con- 
tracted more and more about the shores of this in- 
land sea. 

The persistence of the Germanic tribes in striv- 
ing, from the very beginning of the period of the 
invasions, to reach these same shores and to settle 
there is worth special notice. When, in the course 
of the third century, the frontiers gave way for the 
first time under their blows, they poured south- 
ward in a living flood. The Quadi and the Marco- 
-manni invaded Italy; the Goths marched on the 
Bosphorus; the Franks, the Suevi, and the Van- 
dals, who had crossed the Rhine, pushed on unhesi- 
tatingly towards Aquitaine and Spain. They had 
no thought of merely colonizing the provinces they 
coveted.“Their dream was rather to settle down, 
themselves, in those happy regions where the mild-— 
ness of the climate and the fertility of the soil were 
matched by the charms and the wealth of au : 
zation. : 

This initial attempt produced nothing more per- 
manent than the ruins which remained as its re- 
sult. Rome was still strong enough to drive the in- 
vaders back beyond the Rhine and the Danube. 
For a century and a half she succeeded in restrain- 
ing them, but at the cost of exhausting her armies 
and her finances. 





THE MEDITERRANEAN 5 


More and more unequal became the balance of 
power. The assaults of the barbarians grew more 
relentless as their increasing numbers made the ac- 
quisition of new territory more imperative, while 
the decreasing population of the Empire made a 
successful resistance constantly less possible. De- 
spite the extraordinary skill and determination 
with which the Empire sought to stave off disaster, 
the outcome was inevitable. _ 

At the beginning of the fifth century, all was 
over. The whole West was invaded. Roman prov- 
inces were transformed into Germanic kingdoms. 
The Vandals were installed in Africa, the Visigoths 
in Aquitaine and in Spain, the Burgundians in the 
Valley of the Rhone, the Ostrogoths in Italy. 7 

This nomenclature is significant. It includes 
only Mediterranean countries, and little more is 
needed to show that the objective of the conquer- 
ors, free at last to settle down where they pleased, 
was the sea,—that sea which for so long a time the 
Romans had called, with as much affection as 
pride, mare nostrum. Towards the sea, as of one 
accord, they all turned their steps, impatient to 
settle along its shores and to enjoy its beauty. 

If the Franks did not reach the Mediterranean 
at their first attempt, it is because, having come too 
late, they found the ground already occupied. But 


6 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


they too persisted in striving for a foothold there. — 
One of Clovis’s earliest ambitions was to conquer 
Provence, and only the intervention of Theodoric 
kept him from extending the frontiers of his king- 
dom as far as the Cote d’Azur. Yet this first lack of 
success was not due to discourage his successors. A 
quarter of acentury later, in 536, the Franks made 
good use of Justinian’s offensive against the Ostro- 
soths and wrung from their hard-pressed rivals 
the grant of the coveted territory. It is interesting 
to see how consistently the Merovingian dynasty 
tended, from that date on, to become in its turn a 
Mediterranean power. 

Childebert and Clotaire, for example, ventured 
upon an expedition beyond the Pyrenees in 542, 
which, however, proved to be ill-starred. But it was 
Italy in particular that aroused the cupidity of the 
Frankish kings. They formed an alliance, first with — 
the Byzantines and then with the Lombards, in the 
hope of setting foot south of the Alps. Repeatedly 
thwarted, they persisted in fresh attempts. By 539, 
Theudebert had crossed the Alps, and the territories 
which he had occupied were reconquered by Narses 
in 553. Numerous efforts were made in 584-585 
and from 588 to 590 to get possession anew. 

The appearance of the Germanic tribes on the 
shore of the Mediterranean was by no means a crit- 





THE MEDITERRANEAN y; 


ical point marking the advent of a new era in the 
history of Europe. Great as were the consequences 
which it entailed, it did not sweep the boards clean 
nor even break the tradition. The aim of the invad- 
ers was not to destroy the Roman Empire but to 
settle there and enjoy it. By and large, what they 
preserved far exceeded what they destroyed and 
what they brought that was new. It is true that 
the kingdoms they established on the soil of the 
Empire made an end of the latter in so far as being 
a State in Western Europe. From a political point 
of view the orbis romanus, now strictly localized in 
the East, lost that ecumenical character which had 
made its frontiers coincide with the frontiers of 
Christianity. The Empire, however, was far from 
being estranged to the lost provinces. Its civiliza- 
tion there outlived its authority. By the Church, by 
‘language; by a superiority of institutions and law, 
it prevailed over the conquerors. In the midst of 
the troubles, the insecurity, the misery and the an- 
archy which accompanied the invasions there was 
naturally a certain decline, but even in that de- 
cline there was preserved a physiognomy still dis- 
tinctly Roman. The Germanic tribes were unable, 
and in fact did not want, to do without it. They 
barbarised, but they did not consciously germanise. 

Nothing is better proof of this assertion than 


8 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


the persistence in the last days of the Empire— 
from the fifth to the eighth century—of that mari- 
time character pointed out above. The importance 
of the Mediterranean did not grow less after the 
period of the invasions. The sea remained for the 
Germanic tribes what it had been before their ar- 
rival—the very center of Europe, the mare nostrum. 
The sea had had such great importance in the po- 
litical order that the deposing of the last Roman 
Emperor in the West (476) was not enough in 
itself to turn historical evolution from its time- 
honored direction. It continued, on the contrary, to 
develop in the same theater and under the same 
influences. No indication yet gave warning of the 
end of the commonwealth of civilization created 
by the Empire from the Pillars of Hercules to the 
Aegean Sea, from the coasts of Egypt and Africa 
to the shores of Gaul, Italy and Spain. .In spite of 
the invasion of the barbarians the new world con- 
served, in all essential characteristics, the physiog- 
nomy of the old. To follow the course of events 
_ from Romulus Augustulus to Charlemagne it is 
~ necessary to keep the Mediterranean constantly in 
view.” 

_ All the great events in political history are un- 


2H. Pirenne, “Mahomet et Charlemagne,” Revue belge de philo- 
logie et d’histoire, 1922, Vol. I, p. 77. 





THE MEDITERRANEAN 9 


folded on its shores. From 493 to 526 Italy, gov- 
erned by Theodoric, maintained a hegemony over 
all the Germanic kingdoms, a hegemony through 
which the power of the Roman tradition was per- 
petuated and assured. After Theodoric, this power 
was still more clearly shown. Justinian failed by 
but little of restoring imperial unity (527-565). 
Africa, Spain, and Italy were reconquered. The 
Mediterranean became again a Roman lake. By- 
- zantium, it is true, weakened by the immense effort 
she had just put forth, could neither finish nor 
even preserve intact the astonishing work which 
she had accomplished. The Lombards took North- 
ern Italy away from her (568) ; the Visigoths freed 
themselves from her yoke. Nevertheless she did 
not abandon her ambitions. She retained, for a long 
time to come, Africa, Sicily, Southern Italy. Nor 
did she loose her grip on the West—thanks to the 
sea, the mastery of which her fleets so securely 
held that the fate of Europe rested at that moment, 
more than ever, on the waves of the Mediter- 
ranean. 

What was true of the political situation held* 
equally well for civilization. It seems hardly nec- 
essary to recall that Boéthius (480-525) and Cas- 
siodorus (477-c.562) were Italians as were St. 
Benedict (480-534) and Gregory the Great (59o- 


10 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


604), and that Isidorus of Seville (570-636) was 
a Spaniard. It was Italy that maintained the last 
schools at the same time that she was fostering the — 
spread of monachism north of the Alps. It was in 
Italy, also, that what was left of the ancient cul- 
ture flourished side by side with what was brought 
forth anew in the bosom of the Church. All the 
strength and vigor that the Church possessed was 
concentrated in the region of the Mediterranean. 
There alone she gave evidence of an organization 
and spirit capable of initiating great enterprises. 
An interesting example of this is the fact that Chris- 
tianity was brought to the Anglo-Saxons (596) 
from the distant shores of Italy, not from the 
neighboring shores of Gaul. The mission of St. 
Augustine is therefore an illuminating sidelight 
on the historic influence retained by the Mediter- — 
ranean. And it seems more significant still when 
we recall that the evangelization of. Ireland was 
due to missionaries sent out from Marseilles, and 
that the apostles of Belgium, St. Amand (689- — 
693) and St. Remade (¢. 668), were Aquitanians. 
* A brief survey of the economic development of 
Europe will give the finishing touch to the sub- — 
stantiation of the theory which has here been put — 
forward. That development is, obviously, a clear- . 
cut, direct continuation of the economy of the 











THE MEDITERRANEAN 11 


Roman Empire. In it are rediscovered all the lat- 
ter’s principal traits and, above all, that Mediter- 
ranean character which here is unmistakable. To 
be sure, a general let-down in social activity was 
apparent in this region as in all others. By the last 
days of the Empire there was a clearly marked de- 
cline which the catastrophe of the invasions natur- 
ally helped accentuate. But it would be a decided 
mistake to imagine that the arrival of the Germanic 
tribes had as a result the substitution of a purely 
agricultural economy and a general stagnation in 
trade for urban life and commercial activity.* 
The supposed dislike of the barbarians for towns * 
is an admitted fable to which reality has given the 
lie. If, on the extreme frontiers of the Empire, cer- 
tain towns were put to the torch, destroyed and 
pillaged, it is none the less true that the immense 
majority survived the invasions. A statistical sur- 
vey of cities in existence at the present day in 
France, in Italy and even on the banks of the Rhine 
and the Danube, gives proof that, for the most 
part, these cities now stand on the sites where rose 
the Roman cities, and that their very names are 
often but a transformation of Roman names. 
3A. Dopsch, Wirtschaftliche und soziale Grundlagen der euro- 
paischen Kulturentwicklung, Vienna, 1920, Vol. II, p. 527, takes 


issue strongly with the opinion that the Germanic invasions put 
an end to Roman civilization. 





i =v Ser 


12 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


. The Church had of course closely patterned the 
religious districts after the administrative districts 
of the Empire. As a general rule, each diocese cor- 
responded to a ¢évétas. Since the ecclesiastical or- 
canization suffered no change during the era of the 
Germanic invasions, the result was that in the new 
kingdoms founded by the conquerors it preserved 
intact this characteristic feature. In fact, from the 


/ beginning of the sixth century the word cévitas 


took the special meaning of “episcopal city,” the 
center of the diocese. In surviving the Empire on 
which it was based, the Church therefore contrib- 
uted very largely to the safeguarding of the exist- 
ence of the Roman cities. 

But it must not be overlooked, on the other hand, 
that these cities in themselves long retained a con- 
siderable importance. Their municipal institutions 
did not suddenly disappear upon the arrival of the 
Germanic tribes. Not only in Italy, but also in 
Spain and even in Gaul, they kept their decuriones 
a corps of magistrates provided with a judicial 
and administrative authority, the details of which 
are not clear but whose existence and Roman origin 
is a matter of record.* They continued, likewise, 





4N. D. Fustel de Coulanges, La monarchie franque, p. 236; 
A. Dopsch, of: ci#., Vol. II, ki: E. Mayer, Deutsche und fran- 


+ tps 


zosische Verfassungsgeschichte, Leipzig, 1899, Vol. I, p. 296. 


Se ee 





THE MEDITERRANEAN 13 


the office of the defensor cévitatis, and the practice 
of committing to writing the authentic laws found 
in the gesta municipalia. 

It is also well established that these cities were 
the centers of an economic activity which itself was 
a survival of the preceding civilization. Each city 


was the market for the surrounding countryside, 


the winter home of the great landed proprietors of 
the neighborhood and, if favorably situated, the 
center of a commerce the more highly developed in 
proportion to its nearness to the shores of the Medi- 
terranean. A perusal of Gregory of Tours gives 
ample proof that in the Gaul of his time there was 
still a professional merchant class residing in the 
towns. He cites, in some thoroughly characteristic 
passages, those of Verdun, Paris, Orleans, Cler- 
mont-Ferrand, Marseilles, Nimes, and Bordeaux, 
and the information which he supplies concerning 
them is all the more significant in that it is brought 
into his narrative only incidentally.’ Care should 
of course be taken not to exaggerate its value. An 


equally great fault would be to undervalue it. Cer- | 


tainly the economic order of Merovingian Gaul 


was founded on agriculture rather than on any ' 


other form of activity. More certainly still this had 


5 See Historia Francorum, edit. B. Krusch, Book IV, sec. 43; 
Book VI, sec. 45; Book VIII, secs. 1, 33; Book III, sec. 34. 


14 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


already been the case under the Roman Empire. 

But this does not preclude the fact that inland 
traffic, the import and export of goods and mer- 
chandise, was carried on to a considerable extent. 
It was an important factor in the maintenance of 
society. An indirect proof of this is furnished by 
the institution of market-tolls (eloneum). Thus 
were called the tolls set up by the Roman admin- 
istration along the roads, in the ports, at bridge 
crossings, and elsewhere. The Frankish kings let 
them all stay in force and drew from them such 
copious revenues that the collectors of this class of 
taxes (feloneariz) figured among the number of — 
their most useful functionaires. 

The continued commercial activity after the 
disappearance of the Empire and, likewise, the 
survival of the towns that were the centers thereof 
and the merchants who were the instruments, is ex- 
' plained by the continuation of Mediterranean 
~~ trade. In all the chief characteristics it was the 
same, from the fifth to the eighth centuries, as it 
had been just after Constantine. If, as is probable, 
the decline was the more rapid after the Germanic 
invasions, it remains none the less true that there 
is presented a picture of uninterrupted intercourse 
between the Byzantine East and the West domin- 
ated by the barbarians. By means of the shipping 





ere ee — ae 


THE MEDITERRANEAN LAN 


which was carried on from the coasts of Spain and 
Gaul to those of Syria and Asia Minor, the basin — 
of the Mediterranean did not cease, despite the 
political subdivisions which it had seen take place, 
to consolidate the economic unity which it had 
shaped for centuries under the imperial common- 
wealth. Because of this fact, the economic organi- * 
zation of the world lived on after the political 
transformation. 

In lack of other proofs, the monetary system of 
the Frankish kings would alone establish this truth 
convincingly. This system, as is too well known 
to make necessary any lengthy consideration here, 
was purely Roman or, strictly speaking, Romano- 
Byzantine. This is shown by the coins that were 
minted: the solidus, the tréens, and the denarius— 
that is to say, the sow, the thérd-sou and the denier. 
It is shown further by the metal which was em- 
ployed: gold, used for the coinage of the solédus 
and the ¢réens. It is also shown by the weight 
which was given to specie. It is shown, finally, by 
the effigies which were minted on the coins. In this 
connection it is worth noting that the mints con- 
tinued for a long time, under the Merovingian 
kings, the custom of representing the bust of the 
Emperor on the coins and of showing on the reverse 
of the pieces the Victoréa Augusti and that, carry- 


—a 


16 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


ing this imitation to the extreme, when the Byzan- 
tines substituted the cross for the symbol of that 
victory they went and did the same. Such extreme 
servility can be explained only by the continuing 
influence of the Empire. The obvious reason was 
the necessity of preserving, between the local cur- 
rency and the imperial currency, a conformity 
which would be purposeless if the most intimate re- 
lations had not existed between Merovingian com- 
merce and the general commerce of the Mediter- 
ranean. In other words, this commerce continued 
to be closely bound up with the commerce of the 
Byzantine Empire. Of such ties, moreover, there 
are abundant proofs and it will suffice to mention 
merely a few of the most significant.” 

It should be borne in mind, first of all, that at 
the start of the eighth century Marseilles was 
still the great port of Gaul. The terms employed 
by Gregory of Tours, in the numerous anecdotes 
in which he happens to speak of that city, make 
it seem a singularly animated economic center.’ A 
very active shipping bound it to Constantinople, 


6 M. Prou, “Catalogue des monnaies mérovingiennes de la Biblio- 
théque Nationale de Paris,” with an Introduction by H. Pirenne, 
“Un contraste économique. Mérovingiens et Carolingiens,” Revue 
belge de philologie et a’ histoire, 1923, Vol. II, p. 225. 

7 Historia Francorum, edit. B. Krusch, Book IV, sec. 43; Book 
V, sec. 5; Book VI, secs. 17, 24; Book IX, sec. 22. See also 
Gregory the Great, Epzstolae, I, 45. 





LE ee ee 








THE MEDITERRANEAN 19 
to Syria, Africa, Egypt, Spain and Italy. The 





tiles, wine and oil—were the basis of a regular im- 


_ port trade. Foreign merchants, Jews and Syrians 
_ for the most part, had their residence there, and 
_ their nationality is itself an indication of the close 
relations kept up by Marseilles with Byzantium. 
Finally, the éxtraordinary quantity of coins which 
_ were struck there during the Merovingian era gives 
_material proof of the activity of its commerce.* 


The population of the city must have comprised, 
aside from the merchants, a rather numerous class 


_ of artisans.” In every respect it seems, then, to have 


accurately preserved, under the government of the 


_ Frankish kings, the clearly municipal character of 
- Roman cities. 


The economic development of Marseilles natur- 
ally made itself felt in the hénterland of the port. 


Under its attraction, all the commerce of Gaul 


was oriented toward the Mediterranean. The most 
important market-tolls of the Frankish kingdom 
were situated in the neighborhood of the town at 
Fos, at Arles, at Toulon, at Sorgues, at Valence, 


8M. Prou, op. cit, P. 300. 

It is impossible, in fact, not to infer that at Marseilles there 
was a class of artisans at least as important as that which still 
existed at Arles in the middle of the sixth century. See F. Kiener, 


Verfassungsgeschichte der Provence, Leipzig, 1900, p. 29. 


18 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


at Vienne, and at Avignon”. Here is clear proof 
that merchandise landed in the city was expedited 
to the interior. By the course of the Rhéne and of 
the Saone, as well as by the Roman roads, it reached 
the North of the country. The charters are still in 
existence by which the Abbey of Corbie (Depart- 
ment of Pas-de-Calais) obtained from the kings an 
exemption from tolls at Fos on a number of com- 
modities, among which may be remarked a sur-— 
prising variety of spices of eastern origin, as well 
as papyrus.”* In these circumstances it does not 
seem unwarranted to assume that the commercial 
activity of the ports of Rouen and Nantes, on the 
shores of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as of Quen- 
tovic and Duurstede, on the shores of the North 
Sea, was sustained by the ramifications of the ex- 
port traffic from far-off Marseilles. 

But it was in the South of the country that this 
effect was the most appreciable. All the largest 
cities of Merovingian Gaul were still to be found, 
as in the days of the Roman Empire, south of the 
Loire. The details which Gregory of Tours sup- 
plies concerning Clermont-Ferrand and Orleans 
show that they had within their walls veritable 


10 Marcuffi Formulae, edit. K. Zeumer, No. I, p. 102. 

11], Levillain, Examen critique des chartes mérovingiennes et 
carolingiennes de l’abbaye de Corbie, Paris, 1902, pp. 220, 231, 
235. This treats of the market-tolls of Fos, near Aix-en-Provence. 


THE MEDITERRANEAN 19 


colonies of Jews and Syrians, and if it was so with 
those towns which there is no reason for leliev- 
ing enjoyed a privileged status, it must have been 
so also with the much more important centers such 
-as Bordeaux or Lyons. It is an established fact, 
moreover, that Lyons still had at the Carolingian 
era a quite numerous Jewish population.” 
Here, then, is quite enough to support the con- 
clusion that Merovingian times knew, thanks to 
the continuance of Mediterranean shipping and 
the intermediary of Marseilles, what we may safe- 
ly call a great commerce. It would certainly be an 
error to assume that the dealings of the oriental 
merchants of Gaul were restricted solely to articles 
of luxury. Probably the sale of jewelry, enamels 
and silk stuffs resulted in handsome profits, but 
this would not be enough to explain their number 
‘and their extraordinary diffusion throughout all 
the country. The traffic of Marseilles was, above 
all else, supported by goods for general consump- 
tion such as wine and oil, spices and papyrus. These 
commodities, as has already been pointed out, 
were regularly exported to the North. 
The oriental merchants of the Frankish Empire 
were virtually engaged in wholesale trade. Their 


12 See the letters of Agobard in Monumenta Germaniae historica, 
Vol. V, p. 184. 





‘ 


L 
| es a . Ce, ee A 


20 MEDIEVAL CITIES 
boats, after being discharged on the quays of Mar- 


seilles, certainly carried back, on leaving the shores | 
of Provence, not only passengers but return freight. | 
Our sources of information, to be sure, do not tell | 


‘much about the nature of this freight. Among the 
possible conjectures, one of the most likely is that 
it probably consisted, at least for a good part, in 
human chattels—that is to say, in slaves. Traffic 
in slaves did not cease to be carried on in the 
Frankish Empire until the end of the ninth cen- 
tury. The wars waged against the barbarians of 
Saxony, Thuringia and the Slavic regions provided 
a source of supply which seems to have been abund- 
ant enough. Gregory of Tours speaks of Saxon 
slaves belonging to a merchant of Orleans,’* and 
it is a good guess that this Samo, who departed in 
the first half of the seventh century with a band 
of companions for the country of Wends, whose 
king he eventually became, was very probably 


nothing more than an adventurer trafficking in 


slaves."* And it is of course obvious that the slave 
trade, to which the Jews still assiduously applied 
themselves in the ninth century, must have had its 
origin in an earlier era. 





13 Historia Francorum, edit. B. Krusch, Book IIT, sec. 46. 

147, Goll, “Samo und die karantanischen Slaven,” Mittheilun- 

gen des Instituts fiir Oesterreichische Geschichtsforschung, Vol 
» D. 443. | 








THE MEDITERRANEAN ZA 


If the bulk of the commerce in Merovingian 
Gaul was to be found in the hands of oriental 
merchants, their influence, however, should not be 
exaggerated. Side by side with them, and according 
to all indications in constant relations with them, 
are mentioned indigenous merchants. Gregory of 
Tours does not fail to supply information con- 
cerning them, which would evidently be more 
voluminous if it had not been brought into his 
narrative only incidentally. He shows the King 
consenting to a loan to the merchants of Verdun, 
whose business prospers so well that they soon find 
themselves in a position to reimburse him.” He 
mentions the existence in Paris of a domus nego- 
tiantum—that is to say, apparently, of a sort of 
market or bazaar.’ He speaks of a merchant 
profiteering during the great famine of 585 and 
getting rich.’ And in all these anecdotes he is 
dealing, without the least doubt, with professionals 
and not with merely casual buyers or sellers. 

The picture which the commerce of Merovin- 
sian Gaul presents is repeated, naturally, in the 
other riparian Germanic kingdoms of the Mediter- 


nf r 


' ranean—among the Ostrogoths of Italy, among 







u Historia Francorum, edit. B. Krusch, Book III, sec. 34. 
Tbid., Book VIII, sec. 33. 
7 [bia pepo: VI, sec. 45. 


22 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


the Vandals of Africa, among the Visigoths of 
Spain. The Edict of Theodoric contained a quanti- 
ty of stipulations relative to merchants. Carthage 
continued to be an important port in close relations 
with Spain, and her ships, apparently, went up the 
coast as far as Bordeaux. The laws of the Visigoths 
mentioned merchants from overseas.” | 
In all of this is clearly manifest the vigorous 
continuity of the commercial development of the 
Roman Empire after the Germanic invasions. They 
did not put an end to the economic unity of an- 
tiquity. By means of the Mediterranean and the 
relations kept up thereby between the West and 
the East, this unity, on the contrary, was preserved 
with a remarkable distinctiveness. The great in- 
land sea of Europe no longer belonged, as before, 
to a single State. But nothing yet gave reason to 
predict that it would soon cease-t6 have its time-— 
honored importance. Despite the transformations 
which it had undergone, the new world had not 
lost the Mediterranean character of the old. On 
the shores of the sea was still concentrated the bet- _ 
ter part of its activities. No indication yet gave © 
warning of the end of the commonwealth of civ- 


18 A. Dopsch,Wirtschaftliche und soziale Grundlagen der euro- | 
paischen Kulturentwicklung, Vol. II, p. 432; F. Dahn, Uber 
Handel und Handelsrecht der Westgothen Bausteine, Berlin, 


1880, Vol. II, p. 301. 


THE MEDITERRANEAN a 


ilization, created by the Roman Empire from the 
Pillars of Hercules to the Aegean Sea. At the be- 
- ginning of the eighth century, anyone who sought 
to look into the future would have been unable to 
discern any reason for not believing in the con- 
tinuance of the old tradition. 

- Yet what was then natural and reasonable to 
predict was not to be realized. The world-order 
which had survived the Germanic invasions was 
not able to survive the invasion of Islam. 

It is thrown across the path of history with the 
elemental force of a cosmic cataclysm. Even in the 
lifetime of Mahomet (571-632) no one could have 
imagined the consequences or prepared for them. 
Yet the movement took no more than fifty years to 
spread from the China Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. 
Nothing was able to withstand it. At the first blow, 
‘it overthrew the Persian Empire (637-644). It 
took from the Byzantine Empire, in quick succes- 
sion, Syria (634-636), Egypt (640-642), Africa 
(698). It reached into Spain (711). The resistless 
advance was not to slow down until the start of 
the eighth century, when the walls of Constan- 
tinople on the one side (713) and the soldiers of 
Charles Martel on the other (732) broke that great 
enveloping offensive against the two flanks of 






24 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


But if its force of expansion was exhausted, it 
had none the less changed the face of the world. Its 
sudden thrust had destroyed ancient Europe. I]t 
had put an end to the Mediterranean commor- 
wealth in which it had gathered its strength. 

The familiar and almost “family” sea which 
once united all the parts of this commonwealth — 
was to become a barrier between them. On all its 
shores, for centuries, social life, in its fundamental 
characteristics, had been the same; religion, the 
same; customs and ideas, the same or very nearly 
so. The invasion of the barbarians from the North | 
had modified nothing essential in that situation. 

But now, all of a sudden, the very lands where 
civilization had been born were torn away; the 
Cult of the Prophet was substituted for the Chris- 
tian Faith, Moslem law for Roman law, the Arab 
tongue for the Greek and the Latin tongue. 

The Mediterranean had been a Roman lake; it 
now became, for the most part, a Moslem lake. 
From this time on it separated, instead of uniting, 
the East and the West of Europe. The tie which — 
was still binding the Byzantine Empire to the Ger- 
manic kingdoms of the West was broken. 





L 
ie, 


~“ 


Chapter II 
The Ninth Century 


HE tremendous effect the invasion of Islam 
had upon Western Europe has not, perhaps, 


been fully appreciated. 


unlike greet hak Had igeone ‘before. Fineien 

the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and finally the Ro- 
mans, Western Europe had always received the 
cultural stamp of the East. It had lived, as it were, 
by virtue of the Mediterranean; now for the first 


time it was forced to live by its own resources. The 
center of gravity, heretofore on the shore of the 


Mediterranean, was shifted to the North. As a re- \ 


sult the Frankish Empire, which had so far been 
playing only a minor réle in the history of Europe, , | 
was to become:the arbiter of Europe’s destinies. 
There is obviously more than mere coincidence 
in the simultaneity of the closing of the Mediter- 
ranean by Islam and the entry of the Carolingians 
on the scene. There is the distinct relation of cause 
and effect between the two. The Frankish Empire 
was fated to lay the foundations of the Europe of 
the Middle Ages. But the mission which it fulfilled 
had as an essential prior condition the overthrow 


26 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


of the traditional world-order. The Carolingians 
would never have been called upon to play the 
part they did if historical evolution had not been 
turned aside from its course and, so to speak, “de- 
Saxoned” by the Moslem invasion. Without Islam, 
the Frankish Empire would probably never have 
existed and Charlemagne, without Mahomet, 
would be inconceivable.’ 

“This is made plain enough by the many con- 
trasts between the Merovingian era, during which 
the Mediterranean retained its time-honored his- 
torical importance, and the Carolingian era, when 
that influence ceased to make itself felt. These con- 
trasts were in evidence everywhere: in religious 
sentiment, in political and social institutions, in 
literature, in language and even in handwriting. 
From whatever standpoint it is studied, the civili- 
zation of the ninth century shows a distinct break 
with the civilization of antiquity. Nothing would 
be more fallacious than to see therein a simple con- 
tinuation of the preceding centuries. The coup 
d’état of Pepin le Bref was considerably more than 
the substitution of one dynasty for another. It 
marked a new orientation of the course hitherto 
followed by history. At first glance there seems 


1H. Pirenne, “Mahomet et Charlemagne,” Revue belge de 
philologie et d’histoire, 1922, Vol. I, p. 86 


RE a ae 


ae = " Ba 8. cent 





THE NINTH CENTURY 27 


reason to believe that Charlemagne, in assuming 
the title of Roman Emperor and Augustus, wished 
to restore the ancient tradition. In reality, in set- 
ting himself up against the Emperor of Constan- 
tinople, he broke that tradition. His Empire was 
Roman only insofar as the Catholic Church was 
Roman. For it was from the Church, and the 
Church alone, that came its inspiration. The forces 
which he placed at her service were, moreover, 
forces of the North. His principal collaborators, 
in religious and cultural matters, were no longer, 
as they had previously been, Italians, Aquitanians, 
or Spaniards; they were Anglo-Saxons—a St. 
Boniface or an Alcuin—or they were Swabians, like 
Einhard. In the affairs of the State, which was now 
cut off from the Mediterranean, southerners played 
scarcely any role. The Germanic influence com- 
menced to dominate at the very moment when the 
Frankish Empire, forced to turn away from the 
Mediterranean, spread over northern Europe and 
pushed its frontiers as far as the Elbe and the 
mountains of Bohemia.” 


2 The objection may be raised that Charlemagne conquered in 
Italy the kingdom of the Lombards and in Spain the region 
included between the Pyrenees and the Ebro. But these thrusts 
towards the south are by no means to be explained by a desire 
to dominate the shores of the Mediterranean. The expeditions 
against the Lombards were provoked by political causes and 
especially by the alliance with the Papacy. The expedition in 


28 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


In the field of economics the contrast, which the 
Carolingian period shows. to Merovingian times, 
is especially striking.* In the days of the Merovin- 
gians, Gaul was still a maritime country and trade- 
and traffic flourished because of that fact. The Em- 
pire of Charlemagne, on the contrary, was essen- ° 
tially an inland one. No longer was there any com- 
munication with the exterior; it was a closed State, 
a State without foreign markets, living in a condi- 
tion of almost complete isolation. 

To be sure, the transition from one era to the 
other was not clear-cut. The trade of Marseilles 
did not suddenly cease but, from the middle of the 
seventh century, waned gradually as the Moslems 
advanced in the Mediterranean. Syria, conquered 
by them in 633-638, no longer kept it thriving with 
her ships and her merchandise. Shortly afterwards, 
Egypt passed in her turn under the yoke of Islam 
(638-640), and papyrus no longer came to Gaul. © 
A characteristic consequence is that, after 677, the 
royal chancellory stopped using papyrus.* The im- 


Spain had no other aim than the establishing of a solid fron- 
tier against the Moslems. 

3 H. Pirenne, “Un contraste économique. Mérovingiens et Caro- 
lingiens,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 1923, Vol. II, 
BD. 223) 

* Imports, however, had not completely ceased at that date. The 
last reference we know to the use of papyrus in Gaul is in 737; 
see M. Prou, Manuel de paléographie, 3rd edit., p. 17. In Italy, 
it was continued to be used up to the eleventh century; see 


THE NINTH CENTURY 29 


portation of spices kept up for a while, for the 
monks of Corbie, in 716, believed it useful to have 
ratified for the last time their privileges of the ton- 
lieu of Fos.’ A half century later, solitude reigned 
in the port of Marseilles. Her foster-mother, the 
sea, was shut off from her and the economic life of 
the inland regions which had been nourished 
through her intermediary was definitely extin- 
cuished. By the ninth century Provence, once the \. 
richest country of Gaul, had become the poorest.” 

More and more, the Moslems consolidated their 
domination over the sea. In the course of the ninth 
century they seized the Balearic Isles, Corsica, Sar- 
dinia, Sicily. On the coasts of Africa they founded 
new ports: Tunis (698-703) ; later on, Mehdia to 
the south of this city; then Cairo, in 973. Palermo, 
where stood a great arsenal, became their principal 
base in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Their fleets sailed it in 
complete mastery ; commercial flotillas transported 
the products of the West to Cairo, whence they 
were redispatched to Bagdad, or pirate fleets 
devastated the coasts of Provence and Italy and 
A. Giry, Manuel de diplomatique, p. 494. It was imported there 
either from Egypt or, more probably, from Sicily (where the 
Arabs had introduced its manufacture) by the shipping of the 
_ Byzantine cities of the South of the Peninsular, or by that of 
Venice, which will be discussed in chap. 111. 


5 See chap. 1, Note 11. 
6 F. Kiener, Verfassungsgeschichte der Provence, p. 31. 


30 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


put towns to the torch after they had been pillaged 
and their inhabitants captured to be sold as slaves. 
In 889 a band of these plunderers even laid hold 
of Fraxinetum (the present Garde-Frainet, in the 
Department of the Var) not far from Nice, the 
garrison of which, for nearly a century, had sub- 
jected the neighboring populace to continual raids 
and menaced the roads which led across the Alps 
from France to Italy.’ 

The efforts of Charlemagne and his successors 
to protect the coasts from Saracen raiders were as 
impotent as their attempts to oppose the invasions 
of the Norsemen in the North and West.) The 
hardihood and seamanship of the Danes and Nor- 


wegians made it easy for them to plunder the” 


coasts of the Carolingian Empire during the whole 
of the eleventh century. They conducted their 
raids not only from the North Sea, the Channel, 
and the Gulf of Gascony, but at times even from 
the Mediterranean. Every river which emptied 


into these seas was, at one time or another, ascend- — 


ed by their skilfully constructed barks, splendid 


specimens whereof, brought to light by recent ex- — 
cavations, are now preserved at Christiania. Peri- 


7A. Schulte, Geschichte des mittelalterlichen Handels und Ver- 
kehrs zwischen Westdeutschland und Italien, Leipzig, 1900, Vol. 
Il, p. 59. 


f 


THE NINTH CENTURY 31 


odically the valleys of the Rhine, the Meuse, the 
Scheldt, the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne and the 


‘Rhone were the scene of systematic and persistent 


pillaging.* The devastation was so complete that, 


in many cases indeed, the population itself disap- 
peared. And nothing is a better illustration of the 


essentially inland character of the Frankish Em- 
pire than its inability to organize the defence of its 


coasts, against either Saracens or Norsemen. For 


that defence, to be effective, should have been a 
naval defence, and the Empire had no fleets, or 
hastily improvised ones at best.” 

Such conditions were incompatible with the ex- 
istence of a commerce of first rate importance. The 


~ historical literature of the ninth century contains, 


it is true, certain references to merchants (erca- 
tores, negociatores),° but no illusion should be 
cherished as to their importance. Compared to the 
number of texts which have been preserved from 


8 W. Vogel, Die Normannen und das frankische Reich, Heidel- 
berg, 1906. 

9 Charles de la Ronci€re, “Charlemagne et a civilisation mari- 
time au IX® siécle,” Le Moyen-dge, 1897, Vol. X, p. 201. 

10 A, Dopsch, Die Wirtschaftsentwicklung bee Karolingerzeit, 
Vol. II, pp. 180 #f., has, with very great erudition, cited a number 
of them. We must, however, bear in mind that many among 
them belong to the Merovingian period and that many others 
are far from having the significance which he attributes to them. 
See also J. W. Thompson, “The Commerce of France in the 
Ninth Century,” The Journal of Political Economy, 1915, Vol. 
XXIII, p. 857. ; 


ee ene 


en een + oe 


32 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


that era, these references are extremely rare. The 
capitularies, those regulations touching upon every 
phase of social life, are remarkably meagre in so 
far as applies to commerce. From this it may be 
assumed that the latter played a role of only sec- 
ondary, negligible importance. It was only in the 
North of Gaul that, during the first half of the 
ninth century, trade showed any signs of activity. 

The ports of Quentovic (a place now vanished, 
near Etaples in the Department of Pas-de-Calais) 
and Duurstede (on the Rhine, southwest of 
Utrecht) which under the Merovingian Monarchy 
were already trading with England and Denmark, 
seem to have been centers of a widely extended 
shipping. It is a safe conjecture that because of 
them the river transport of the Friesians along the 
Rhine, the Scheldt and the Meuse enjoyed an im- 
portance that was matched by no other region dur- 
ing the reigns of Charlemagne and his successors. 
The cloths woven by the peasants of Flanders, and 
which contemporary texts designate by the name ~ 
of Friesian cloaks (pallia fresonica),* together 
with the wines of Rhenish Germany, supplied to 


11H. Pirenne, “Draps de Frise ou draps de Flandre?” Vzertel- 
cee fiir Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1909, Vol. VII, 
p. 308. 


THE NINTH CENTURY an 


that river traffic the substance of an export trade 
which seems to have been fairly regular up to the 
day when the Norsemen took possession of the 
ports in question. It is known, moreover, that the 
deniers coined at Duurstede had a very extensive 
circulation. They served as prototypes for the old- 
est coins of Sweden and Poland,” evident proof 
that they early penetrated, no doubt at the hands 
of the Norsemen, as far as the Baltic Sea. Attention 
may also be called, as having been the substance of 
a rather extensive trade, to the salt industry of 
-Noirmoutier, where Irish ships were to be seen.”® 
Salzburg salt, on the other hand, was shipped 
along the Danube and its affluents to the interior 
of the Empire.** The sale of slaves, despite the 
_ prohibitions that were laid down by the sovereigns, 
was carried on along the western frontiers, where 
_ the prisoners of war taken from among the pagan 
_ Slavs found numerous purchasers. 

_ The Jews seem to have applied themselves par- 
ticularly to this sort of traffic. They were still 
numerous, and were found in every part of Fran- 
cia. Those in the South of Gaul were in close rela- 
12M. Prou, Catalogue des monnaies carolingiennes de la Biblio- 
théeque Nationale, p. 10. 


BW. Vogel, Die Normannen und das frankische Reich, p. 62. 
ae laria segam Francorum, edit. A. Boretius, Vol. II, p. 250. 





34 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


tions with their coreligionists of Moslem Spain, to 
whom they are accused of having sold Christian 
children.” 

It was probably from Spain, or perhaps also 
from Venice, that these Jews obtained the spices 
and the valuable textiles in which they dealt. 
However, the obligation to which they were sub- 
jected of having their children baptised must have 


caused a great number of them to emigrate south 


of the Pyrenees at an early date, and their com- 


mercial importance steadily declined in the course | 


of the ninth century. As for the Syrians, they were 
no longer of importance at this era.** | 

It is, then, most likely that the commerce of 
Carolingian times was very much reduced. Ex- 
cept in the neighborhood of Quentovic and Duur- 
stede, it consisted only in the transport of indis- 
pensable commodities, such as wine and salt, in the 
prohibited traffic of a few slaves, and in the barter, 





through the intermediary of the Jews, of a small | 


number of products from the East. 
Of a regular and normal commercial activity, of 
steady trading carried on by a class of professional 


15 See the letter. of Agobard, cited chap. 1, Note 12. 

16 The ingenious demonstration of Mr. J. W. Thompson to 
prove the contrary, in his work cited in Note 10 above, raises 
philological difficulties which prevent our adopting it. The Greek 
ie of the work Capfi, upon which it is based, cannot be ac- 
cepted. 








ee EE ee - 


THE NINTH CENTURY 35 


merchants, in short, of all that constitutes the very 
essence of an economy of exchange worthy of the 
name, no traces are to be found after the closing 
off of the Mediterranean by the Islamic invasion. 
The great number of markets (mercatus), which 
were to be found in the ninth century, in no way 
contradicts this assertion. They were, as a matter 
of fact, only small local market-places, instituted 
for the weekly provisioning of the populace by 
means of the retail sale of foodstuffs from the 
country. As a proof of the commercial activity of 
the Carolingian era, it would be equally beside the 
point to speak of the existence of the street occu- 
pied by merchants (vicus mercatorum)™ at Aix- 
la-Chapelle near the palace of Charlemagne, or of 
similar streets near certain great abbeys such as, 
for example, that of St. Riquier. The merchants 
with whom we have to do here were not, in fact, 
professional merchants but servitors charged with 
the duty of supplying the Court or the monks. 
They were, so to speak, employees of the seignorial 
household staff and were in no respect merchants. 

There is, moreover, material proof of the eco- 
nomic decline which affected Western Europe from 


17 Imbart de la Tour, “Des immunités commerciales accordées 
aux églises du VIII* au IX° siécle,” Etudes d'histoire du Moyen- 
age, dediées a Gabriel Monod, Paris, 1896, p. 71. 


; {- - 
'~ i: dl “I ~_ J enti 


26 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


the day when she ceased to belong to the Mediter- | 


ranean commonwealth. It is furnished by the re- | 


form of: the monetary system, initiated by Pepin 
le Bref and completed by Charlemagne. That re- 
form abandoned gold coinage and substituted sil- 
ver in its place. The so/édus which had heretofore, 
conforming to the Roman tradition, constituted 
the basic monetary unit, was now only nominal 
money. The only real coins from this time on were 
the silver deniers, weighing about two grams, the 
metallic value of which, compared to that of the 
dollar, was approximately eight and one-half 
cents." The metallic value of the Merovingian 
gold sol¢dus being nearly three dollars, the im- 
portance of the reform can be readily appreciated. 
Undoubtedly it is to be explained only by a pro- 
digious falling off of both trading and wealth. 

If it is admitted, and it must be admitted, that 
the reappearance of gold coinage, with the florins 


of Florence and the ducats of Venice in the thir- - 


teenth century, characterised the economic renais- 
sance of Europe, the inverse is also true: the aban- 


doning of gold coinage in the eighth century was 


the manifestation of a profound decline. It is not 


enough to say that Pepin and Charlemagne wished | 


18 M. Prou, Catalogue des monnaies carolingiennes de la Biblio- 


theque Nationale, p. xlv. 





THE NINTH CENTURY 


to remedy the monetary disorder of the last days 
of the Merovingian era. [[t would have been quite 
possible for them to find a remedy without giving 
up the gold standard. They gave up the standard, 
obviously, from necessity—that is to say, as a result 
of the disappearance of the yellow metal in Gaul. 
And this disappearance had no other cause than 
the interruption of the commerce of the Mediter- 
ranean.) The proof of this is given by the fact that 
Southern Italy, remaining in contact with Con- 
stantinople, retained like the latter a gold stand- 
ard, for which the Carolingian sovereigns were 
forced to substitute a silver standard.) The very 
light weight of their denéers, moreover, testifies 
to the economic isolation of their Empire. It is in- 
conceivable that they would have reduced the 
monetary unit to a thirtieth of its former value 
if there had been preserved the slightest bond be- 
tween their States and the Mediterranean regions 
where the gold so/édus continued to circulate. | 
But this is not all. The monetary reform of the | 
‘ninth century not only was in keeping with the 
general impoverishment of the era in which it took 
place, but with the circulation of money which 
_was noteworthy for both lightness and inadequa- 
cy. In the absence of centers of attraction suffi- 
ciently powerful to draw money from afar, it re- 





MEDIEVAL CITIES 


maineu, so to speak, stagnant. Charlemagne and 
his successors in vain ordered that denzers should 
be coined only in the royal mints. Under the reign 
of Louis the Pious, it was necessary to give to cer- 
tain churches authorization to coin money, in view 
of the difficulties, under which they labored, of ob- 
taining cash. From the second half of the ninth 
century on, the authorization to establish a mar- 
ket was almost always accompanied by the authori- 
zation to establish a mint in the same place.”” The 
State could not retain the monopoly of minting 
coins. It was consistently frittered away. And that 
is again a manifestation, by no means equivocal, 
of the economic decline. History shows that the 
better commerce is sustained, the more the mone- 
tary system is centralized and simplified. The dis- 
persion, the variety, and in fact the anarchy which 
it manifests as we follow the course of the ninth 
century, ends by giving striking confirmation to. 
the general theory here put forward. 

There have been some attempts to attribute to 
Charlemagne a farseeing political economy. This 
is to lend him ideas which, however great we sup- 
pose his genius to have been, it is impossible for 
him to have had. No one can submit with any 





19 M. Prou, Catalogue des monnaies carclmngernmms de la Pit 
theque Nationale, p. 1xi. 





THE NINTH CENTURY 


‘likelihood of truth that the works which he com- 
‘menced in 793, to join the Rednitz to the Altmuhl 


and so establish communication between the Rhine 


and the Danube, could have had any other purpose 


than the transport of troops, or that the wars 


against the Avars were provoked by the desire to 
‘open up a commercial route to Constantinople. 


The stipulations, in other respects inoperative, of 
the capitularies regarding coinages, weights and 
measures, the market-tolls and the markets, were 


‘intimately bound up with the general system of 
“regulation and control which was typical of Caro- 
-lingian legislation. The same is true regarding the 
“measures taken against usury and the prohibition 


enjoining members of the clergy from engaging in 
ro) oo oD 


business. Their purpose was to combat fraud, dis- 
order and indiscipline and to impose a Christian 


morality on the people. Only a prejudiced point 


of view can see in them an attempt to stimulate 
the economic development of the Empire. 


| 
} 
| 
| 


| 


We are so accustomed to consider the reign of 
Charlemagne as an era of revival that we are un- 


consciously led to imagine an identical progress in 


all fields. Unfortunately, what is true of literary > 
culture, of the religious State, of customs, insti- 
tutions and statecraft is not true of communica 


_ tions and commerce/ Every great thing that Charle- 


| ? 
n - 4 
* ze ‘+ 
La i oo 


VI DIEVAL CITIES 


magne accomplished was accomplished either by 
his military strength or by his alliance with the 


Church. For that matter, neither the Church nor _ 
arms could overcome the circumstances in virtue of | 
which the Frankish Empire found itself deprived — 
of foreign markets. It was forced, in fact, to ac-_ 
commodate itself to a situation which was inevi- — 


tably prescribed.| History is obliged to recognize 
that, however brilliant it seems in other respects, 


the cycle of Charlemagne, considered from an 


economic viewpoint, is a cycle of regression4 . 
_The financial organization of the Frankish Em- 
pire makes this plain. It was, indeed, as rudimen- 


tary as could be. The poll tax, which the Merovin- 


gians had preserved in imitation of Rome, no 


longer existed.” The resources of the sovereign — 


consisted only in the revenue from his demesnes, 


in the tributes levied on conquered tribes and in 
the booty got by war. The market-tolls no longer 


contributed to the replenishment of the treasury, 
thus attesting to the commercial decline of the 
period. They were nothing more than a simple ex- 
tortion brutally levied in kind on the infrequent 
merchandise transported by the rivers or along the 


_roads."y The sorry proceeds, which should have 
20G, Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, 2nd edit., 1885, | 


Vol. IV, p. 112. 
21 Thid., p. $4. 


THE NINTH CENTURY 41 


served to |eep up the bridges, the docks and the 
highways, were swallowed up by the functionaries 
who collected them/The ssi dominici, created to 
supervise their administration, were impotent in 
abolishing the abuses which they proved to exist 
because the State, unable to pay its agents, was 
likewise unable to impose its authority on them. 
It was obliged to call on the aristocracy which, ° 
thanks to their social status, alone could give free 
services. But in so doing it was constrained, for 
lack of money, to chose the instruments of power 
from among the midst of a group of men whose 
most evident interest was to diminish that power. 
The recruiting of the functionaries from among 
the aristocracy was the fundamental vice of the 
Frankish Empire and the essential cause of its dis- 
solution, which became so rapid after the death of 
Charlemagne. Surely, nothing is more fragile than 
that State the sovereign of which, all-powerful in 
theory, is dependent in fact upon the fidelity of his 
independent agents. 

The feudal system was in embryo in this con- 
tradictory situation. The Carolingian Empire 
would have been able to keep going only if it had 
possessed, like the Byzantine Empire or the Em- 
pire of the Caliphs, a tax system, a financial con- 
trol, a fiscal centralization and a treasury provid- 





42 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


ing for the salary of functionaries, for pv >lic works, 
and for the maintenance of the army and the navy. 
The financial impotence which caused its downfall 
was a clear demonstration of the impossibility it 
encountered of maintaining a political structure 
on an economic base which was no longer able to 
support the load. 
_ \That economic base of the State, as of society, 
was from this time on the landed proprietor. Just 
as the Carolingian Empire was an inland State 
without foreign markets, so also was it an essential- _ 
ly agricultural State. The traces of commerce which — 
were still to be found there were negligible. There _ 
was no other property than landed property, and 
_ no other work than rural work.) As has already been 
stated above, this predominance of agriculture was 
no new fact. It existed in a very distinct form in 
the Roman era and it continued with increasing 
strength in the Merovingian era.\As early as the 
close of antiquity, all the West of Europe was 
covered with great demesnes belonging to an aris- 
tocracy the members of which bore the title of sen- _ 
ators (senatores). More and more, property was | 
- disappearing in a transformation into hereditary _ 
- tenures, while the old free farmers were themselves ‘| 
undergoing a transformation into “cultivators” 
(colon) attached to the soil from father to son. _ 











THE NINTH CENTURY 43 


The Germanic invasions did not noticeably alter | 
this state of things./We have definitely given up 
the notion of imagining the Germanic tribes in the 
light of a democracy of peasants, all on an equal 
footing. Social distinctions were very great among 
them when they invaded the Empire. They 
comprised a minority of the wealthy and a majori- 
ty of the poor. The number of slaves and half-free 
(ite) was considerable.” 

The arrival of the invaders in the Roman prov- 
inces brought with it, then, no overthrow of the 
existing order. The newcomers preserved, in adapt- 
ing themselves thereto, the status which they found 
to exist. Many of the invaders received from the 
King or acquired by violence or by marriage, or 
otherwise, great demesnes which made them the 
equals of the “senators.” The landed aristocracy, 
far from disappearing, was on the contrary invig- 
orated by new elements. | 

!The disappearance of the small free proprietors 
continued. It seems, in fact, that as early as the 
start of the Carolingian period only a very small 
number of them still existed in Gaul. Charlemagne 


22W. Wittich, Die Grundherrschaft in Nordwestdeutschland, 
Leipzig, 1896; H. Pirenne, “Liberté et proprieté en Flandre du 
IX° au XII® siécle,” Bulletin de l’Académie Royale de Belgique, 
Classe des lettres, 1906; H. Van Werveke, “Grands propriétaires 
en Flandre au VII° et au VIII® siécle,” Revue belge de philologie 
et @histoire, 1923, Vol. I, p. 321. 





44 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


in vain took measures to safeguard those who were 
left.“"| The need of protection inevitably made 
them turn to the more powerful individuals to 
whose patronage they subordinated their persons 
and their possessions. | 
| /\ Large estates, then, kept on being more and 
_ more generally in evidence after the period of the 
‘invasions. The favor which the kings showed the 
Church was an additional factor in this develop- 
ment, and the religious fervor of the aristocracy had 
the same effect. Monasteries, whose number mul- 
tiplied with such remarkable rapidity after the 
seventh century, were receiving bountiful gifts of 
land. Everywhere ecclesiastical demesnes and lay 
demesnes were mixed up together, uniting not 
only cultivated ground, but’ woods, heaths and 
waste-lands. | 

The organization of these demesnes remained in 
conformity, in Frankish Gaul, with what it had 
been in Roman Gaul. It is clear that this could 
not have been otherwise. The Germanic tribes had 
no motive for, and were, furthermore, incapable of, 
substituting a different organization. It consisted, 
in its essentials, of classifying all the land in 
two groups, subject to two distinct forms of gov- 
ernment. The first, the less extensive, was directly 


23 Capitularia regum Francorum, edit. A. Boretius, Vol. I, p. 125. 
rs 


to a | 


Ne eee eee eeEeEeEEeee 





THE NINTH CENTURY 45 


exploited by the proprietor; the second was di- 
vided, under deeds of tenure, among the peasants. 


| Each of the vzllae of which a demesne was com- 


posed comprised both seignorial land (ferra do- 
minicata) and censal land, divided in units of cul- 
tivation (ansus) held by hereditary right by 
manants or villeins (7zanentes, villanz) in return 
for the prestation of rents, in money or in kind, 
and statute-labor.”* | 

As long as urban life and commerce flourished, 
the great demesnes had a market for the disposal of 
their produce. There is no room for doubt that 
during all the Merovingian era it was through 
them that the city groups were provisioned and 
that the merchants were supplied. But it could not 
help be otherwise when trade disappeared and 
therewith the merchant class and the municipal 
population. The great estates suffered the same 
fate as the Frankish Empire. Like it, they lost their 
markets. The possibility of selling abroad existed 
no longer because of the lack of buyers, and it be- 


24 The registry of rents of the Abbot Irminon is the principal 
source of knowledge of this organization. The prolegomena of 


-Guérard in the edition which he issued in 1844, should, however, 


be read. One should also consult, on this point, the famous 


Capitulare de Villis. K. Gareis has issued a good commentary: 


Die Landguterordnung Karls des Grossen, Berlin, 1895. On the 
recent controversies over the import and the date of the Capitu- 
lare, see M. Bloch, “L’origine et la date du Capitulare de Villis,” 
Revue Historique, 1923, Vol. CXLIII, p. 40. 


— or’ 


46 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


came useless to continue to produce more than the 
indispensable minimum for the subsistence of the 
men, proprietors or tenants, living on the estate. 
_For an economy of exchange was substituted an ~ 

economy of consumption.| Each demesne, in place 
of continuing to deal with the outside, constituted 
from this time on a little world of its own. It lived 
by itself and for itself, in the traditional immobili- 
. ty of a patriarchal form of government. The ninth 
, century is the golden age of what we have called 
the closed domestic economy and which we might 
call, with more exactitude, the economy of no mar- 

\ kets. f 
This economy, in which production had no other 
aim than the sustenance of the demesnial group 
and which in consequence was absolutely foreign 
to the idea of profit, can not be considered as a nat- 
ural and spontaneous phenomenon. It was, on the 
contrary, merely the result of an evolution which 
forced it to take this characteristic form. The 
great proprietors did not give up selling the prod- 
25 Certain authors have believed that demesnial products were 
PM for sale. See, for example, F. Keutgen, Amter und 
unfte, Jena, 1903, p. 58. It is a fact that in certain, exceptional 
' cases and, for example, in times of famine, selling took place. 


| Butasa general rule there was certainly no selling. The texts 
alleged to prove the contrary are too few in number and too 
\anblssoe to carry conviction. It is evident that the whole — 
onomy of the demesnial system of the late Middle Ages i is in 
flagrant opposition to this idea of profit. 


a 





THE NINTH CENTURY 47 


ucts of their lands of their own free will; they 
stopped because they could not do otherwise. Cer- 
tainly if commerce had continued to supply them 
regularly with the means of disposing of these 
products abroad, they would not have neglected 


to profit thereby.|They did not sell because they , 
could not sell, and they could not sell because mar- | 
kets were wanting. The closed demesnial organi- 


zation, which made its appearance at the beginning 
of the ninth century, was a phenomenon due to 
compulsion. That is merely to say that it was an 
abnormal phenomenon, | 

This can be most effectively shown by compar- 
ing the picture, which Carolingian Europe pre- 
sents, with that of Southern Russia at the same 
eras 
| We know that bands of sea-faring Norsemen, 
that is to say of Scandinavians originally from 
Sweden, established their domination over the 
Slavs of the watershed of the Dnieper during the 
course of the ninth century. These conquerors, 
whom the conquered designated by the name of 
Russians, naturally had to congregate in groups in 


26 For what follows, consult: N. Rostovtzeff, Iranians and Greeks 
in South Russia, Oxford, 1922; V. L. P. Thomsen, The Relations 
between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia and the Origin of the 
Russian State, Oxford, 1877; V. O. Kluchevsky, A History of 
Russia, New York, 1911, Vol. I, p. 77; I. M. Kulischer, Jstoria 


' Russkoi torgovlt, Petrograd, 1923, D'S: 


ate 


48 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


order to insure their safety in the midst of the pop- 
ulations they had subjected. 

For this purpose they built fortified inclosures, 
called gorods in the Slavic tongue, where they set- 
tled with their princes and the images of their 
gods. The most ancient Russian cities owe their 
origin to these entrenched camps. There were such 
camps at Smolensk, Suzdal and Novgorod; the 
most important and the most civilized was at Kiev, 
the prince of which ranked above all the other 
princes. The subsistence of the invaders was as- 


sured by tributes levied on the native population.) | 


\It was therefore possible for the Russians to 
live off the land, without seeking abroad to sup- 
plement the resources which the country gave them 
in abundance. They would have done so, without 
doubt, and been content to use the prestations of 
their subjects if they had found it impossible, like 
their contemporaries in Western Europe, to com- 
municate with the exterior. But the position which 
they occupied must have early led them to practise 
an economy of exchange. | 

\ Southern Russia was placed, as a matter of fact, 
between two regions of a superior civilization. To 
the east, beyond the Caspian Sea, extended the 
Caliphate of Bagdad; to the south, the Black Sea 








THE NINTH CENTURY 49 


bathed the coasts of the Byzantine Empire and 
pointed the way towards Constantinople. ‘The bar- 
barians felt at once the effect of these two strong 
_ centers of attraction. To be sure they were in the 
highest degree energetic, enterprising and adven- 
turous, but their native qualities only served to 
turn circumstances to the best account. Arab mer- 
chants, Jews, and Byzantines were already fre- 
quenting the Slavic regions when they took posses- 
sion, and showed them the route to follow. They 
themselves did not hesitate to plunge along it un- 
der the spur of the love of gain, quite as natural to 
primitive man as to civilized. 

The country they occupied placed at their dis- 
posal products particularly well suited for trade 
with rich empires accustomed to the refinements of 
life. _Its immense forests furnished them with a 
quantity of honey, precious in those days when 
sugar was still unknown, and furs, sumptuousness 
in which was a requisite, even in southern climes, 
of luxurious dress and equipment. | 

Slaves were easier still to procure and, thanks 
to the Moslem harems and the great houses or 
Byzantine workshops, had a sale as sure as it was 
remunerative. Thus as early as the ninth century, 
while the Empire of Charlemagne was kept in 1so- 





50 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


, lation after the closing of the Mediterranean, 
\ Southern Russia on the contrary was induced to 
sell her products in the two great markets which 
exercised their attraction on her. The paganism of 
the Scandinavians of the Dnieper left them free of 
the religious scruples which prevented the Chris- 
tians of the West from having dealings with the 
Moslems. Belonging neither to the faith of Christ 
/nor to that of Mahomet, they only asked to get 
| rich, in dealing impartially with the adepts of the 
‘one or the other.) 
The importance of the trade which they kept up 

as much with the Moslem Empire as with the 

Greek, is made clear by the extraordinary number 

of Arab and Byzantine coins discovered in Russia 


: 
\/ 
~ WV 


a 


en 


and which mark, like a golden compass needle, the 


direction of the commercial routes. 


\In the region of Kiev they followed to the south | 
j Ar § y 


the course of the Dnieper, to the east the Volga, and 
to the north the direction marked by the Western 
Dvina or the lakes which abut the Gulf of Bothnia. 
Information from Jewish or Arab travellers and 
from Byzantine writers fortunately supplements 
the data from archaeological records. It will suf- 
fice here to give a brief résumé of what Constan- 
tine Porphyrogenetus reports in the ninth centu- 


fi or 
i <. 
aed. 





ee -—-- — 


THE NINTH CENTURY gl 
ry.’ He shows the Russians assembling their boats 
at Kiev each year after the ice melts. Their flotilla 
slowly descends the Dnieper, whose numerous cat- 
aracts present obstacles that have to be avoided by 
dragging the barks along the banks. The sea once 
reached, they sail before the wind along the coasts 
towards Constantinople, the supreme goal of their 
long and perilous voyage. There the Russian mer- 
chants had a special quarter and made commercial 
treaties, the oldest of which dates back to the ninth 
century, regulating their relations with the popu- 
lation. Many of them, seduced by its attractions, 
settled down there and took service in the Imperial 
Guard, as had done, before that time, the Germans 
in the legions of Rome. 

|The City of the Emperors (C'zarograd) had for 
the Russians a fascination the influence of which 
has lasted across the centuries. It was from her 
that they received Christianity.(957-1015) ; it_was 
from. her t her that. they borrowed their art, their writ- 
ing, ag, the u use of money and a good part.of their ad- 


‘ministrative organization. Nothing more is needed 


to demonstrate the role played by Byzantine com- 


27 De administrando imperio (written about 950). For this text 
the excellent commentary of V. L. P. Thomsen, of. cit., should 
be consulted. 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


AG LIBRARY 





52 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


merce in their social life. It occupied so essential 
a place therein that without it their civilization 
would remain inexplicable. To be sure, the forms 
in which it is found are very primitive, but the im- 
portant thing is not the forms of this traffic; it is 
the effect it had. | 


Among the Russians of the late Middle Ages it 


actually determined the constitution of society. 
By striking contrast with what has been shown to 
be the case with their contemporaries of Carolin- 
gian Europe, not only the importance but the very 
idea of real estate was unknown to them. Their 
notion of wealth comprised only personal property, 
of which slaves were the most valuable. They were 
not interested in land except in so far as, by their 
control of it, they were able to appropriate its 
products. And if this conception was that of a class 
of warrior-conquerors, there is but little doubt that 
it was held for so long because these warriors were, 
at the same time, merchants. We might, inciden- 
tally, add that the concentration of the Russians 
in the gorods, motivated in the beginning by mili- 
tary necessity, is itself found to fit in admirably 
with ie at needs. An organization created 
by barbarians for the purpose of keeping conquered 
populations under the yoke was well adapted to 


the sort of life which theirs became after they gave _ 
a 





THE NINTH CENTURY 53 


heed to the economic attraction of Byzantium and 
_ Bagdad. (Their example shows that a society does 


not necessarily have to pass through an agricultur- 


al stage before giving itself over to commerce. 
Here commerce appears as an original phenom- 


enon. And if this is so, it is because the Russians 


instead of finding themselves isolated from the 


outside world like Western Europe were on the 


contrary pushed or, to use a better word, drawn 
into contact with it from the beginning. Out of 
_ this derive the violent contrasts which are disclosed 


in comparing their social state with that of the 


Carolingian Empire: in place of a demesnial aris- 


tocracy, a commercial aristocracy; in place of serfs 


attached to the soil, slaves considered as instru- 
_ ments of work; in place of a population living in 
the country, a population gathered together in 
towns; in place, finally, of a simple economy of 
consumption, an economy of exchange and a reg- 
ular and permanent commercial activity. 


That these outstanding contrasts were the result 
of circumstances which gave Russia markets while 


_ depriving the Carolingian Empire of them, history 
_ clearly demonstrates.|The activity of Russian trade 
_ was maintained, indeed, only as long as the routes 
_ to Constantinople and Bagdad remained open be- 


fore it. It was not fated to withstand the crisis 


er 
54 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


: 
: 


which the Petchenegs brought about in the elev- | 


enth century. The invasion of these barbarians 


along the shores of the Caspian and the Black Seas | 


brought in their train consequences identical to 


those which the invasion of Islam in the Mediter- | 
ranean had had for Western Europe in the eighth | 


eRe 


| Just as the latter cut the communications be- | 
tween Gaul and the East, the former cut the com- 
munications between Russia and her foreign mar- 
kets. And in both quarters, the results of this | 
interruption coincide with a singular exactitude. In 
Russia as in Gaul, when means of communication — 
disappeared and towns were depopulated and the | 
populace forced to find on the ground the means | 


of their subsistence, a period of agricultural econo- _ 
my was substituted for a period of commercial” 
economy. Despite the differences in details, it was 
the same picture in both cases. The regions of the | 
South, ruined and troubled by the barbarians, gave _ 


way in importance to the regions of the North. 

Kiev fell into a decline as Marseilles had fallen, 
.and the center of the Russian State was removed 
' to Moscow just as the center of the Frankish State, 

with the Carolingian dynasty, had been removed 
‘sto the watershed of the Rhine. And to end by mak- 
/. 

ing the parallel still more conclusive, there arose, 





| 





THE NINTH CENTURY 55 


in Russia as in Gaul, a landed aristocracy, and a 
demesnial system was organized in which the im- 
possibility of exporting or of selling forced produc- 
tion to be limited to the needs of the proprietor 
and his peasants. | 

So, in both cases, the same causes produced the 
same_effects.\But they did not produce them at the 
same date. Russia was living by trade at an era 
when the Carolingian Empire knew only the de- 
mesnial régime, and she in turn inaugurated this! 
form of government at the very moment when 
Western Europe, having found new markets, broke 
away from it. We shall examine further how this 
break was accomplished. a the 
moment to have proved, by the example of Russia, Yi 
the theory that the economy of the e Carolingian era era 
was not the result of an internal ere on butmos but must 
be attributed to the closing of the Mediter of the Mediterranean _ | 
by islam ay 











eR tec, : 
OI A St EERE eX: NN A NO 


Chapter III 
City Origins 


__ A_N interesting question is whether or not cities 
existed in the midst of that essentially agri- 
cultural civilization into which Western Europe 
had developed in the course of the ninth century. 
The answer depends on the meaning given to the 


-¥. word “city.” If by it is meant a locality the popu- 


* lation of which, instead of living by working the — 
soil, devotes itself to commercial activity, the an- 
swer will have to be “No.”’ The answer will also 
be in the negative if we understand by “city” a 
community endowed with legal personality and 

_ possessing laws and institutions peculiar to itself.) 
\On the other hand, if we think of a city as a center 
of administration and as a fortress, it is clear that 
the Carolingian period knew nearly as many cities 
as the centuries which followed it must have 
known. That is merely another way of saying that 
the cities which were then to be found were without 
two of the fundamental attributes of the cities of 

_ the Middle Ages and of modern times—a middle- 

*. class population and a communal organization. 

Primitive though it may be, every stable society 
feels the need of providing its members with cen- | 


\ 


CITY ORIGINS 


ters of assembly, or meeting places. Ubservance 
of religious rites, maintenance of markets, and po- 
~ litical and judicial gatherings necessarily bring 
about the designation of localities intended for the 
assembly of those who wish to or who must par- 
ticipate therein, 
| Military needs have a still more positive effect. 
- Populations have to prepare refuges where will be 
- found momentary protection from the enemy in 
case of invasion. War is as old as humanity, and 
the construction of fortresses almost as old as war. 
The first buildings erected by man seem, indeed, to 
have been protecting walls. Even today, there is 
hardly a barbaric race among whom this tendency 
is not found and, as far back as we may go in the 
past, the situation remains the same. The acropoles 
of the Greeks, the oppida of the Etruscans, the 
Latins, and the Gauls, the durgen of the Germans, 
the gorods of the Slavs, like the kraals of the 
Negroes of South Africa, were in the beginning no 
_ more than places of assembly and, especially, shel- 
_ ters. Their plan and their construction depended 
_ naturally upon the conformation of the terrain and 
upon the building materials at hand. But the gen- 
eral arrangement of them was everywhere the 
_ same. It consisted of a space, square or circular in 
_ shape, surrounded by ramparts made of trunks of 


De 


| a 


ihe 


MEDIEVAL CITIES . | 


rees, or mud or blocks of stone, protected by a 
moat and entered by gates. In short, it was an en- 
closure./And it is an interesting fact that the words 
which in modern English and in modern Russian 
(town and gorod) designate a city, originally des- 
jae Ge an enclosure.) 

~\In ordinary times, these enclosures remaihed 
y aoet The people resorted to them only on the oc- 
casion of religious or civic ceremonies, or when war 
constrained them to seek refuge there with their 
herds. But, little by little with the march of civili- 
zation, their intermittent animation became a con- 
tinuous animation. Temples arose; magistrates or 
chieftains established their residence; merchants 
and artisans came to settle. What first had been 
only an occasional center of assembly became a 
city, the administrative, religious, political and 
economic center of all the territory of the tribe 
whose name it customarily took. | 

[This explains why, in many societies and partic- 
ularly in classic antiquity, the political life of the 
cities was not restricted to the circumference of _ 
their walls. The city, indeed, had been built for 
the tribe, and every man in it, whether dwelling — 
within or without the walls, was equally a citizen 
thereof}/Neither Greece nor Rome knew anything 
analogous to the strictly local and particularist 


~ 





2 rs A m . < a i y 
Re A, Sl ae 





CITY ORIGINS 


bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages. |The life of the 
city was blended with the national life. The law 
of the city was, like the religion itself of the city, 
common to all the people whose capital it was and , 
who constituted with it a single autonomous re- 
public. 

(The municipal system, then, was identified in 
antiquity with the constitutional system. And when 
Rome extended her dominioncover all the Medi- 
terranean world, she made it the basis of the ad- 
ministrative system of her Empire.’ This system 
withstood, in Western Europe, the Germanic inva- 3 

sions.’ Vestigial but thoroughly definite relics of it 
were still to-be found i an.Gaul, in Spain, in Africa, 
and in Italy,. long after’ the fifth century. Little by 
little, however, thevncteasing: weakness of social 
organization did away*with, mést of its character- 
istic features. By the eighth century, neither the 
decuriones, nor the gesta municipalia, nor the de-. 
fensor civitatis were longer in existence.| At the 
same time the thrust of Islam in the Mediter- 
ranean, in making impossible the commerce which 
up to now had still sustained a certain activity in 
the cities, condemned them to an inevitable de-X 
cline. But it did not condemn them to death. Cur- 
tailed and weakened though they were, they sur- 


1 See above, chap. I. 





So MEDIEVAL CITIES 


vived. Their social function did not altogether dis- 
appear. In the agricultural social order of the time, 
they retained in spite of everything a fundamental 
importance. It is necessary to take full count of the 
role they played, in order to understand what was 
to befall them later. 
| As has been stated above, the Church had based 
its diocesan boundaries on the boundaries of the 
Roman cities.” Held in respect by the barbarians, 
it therefore continued to maintain, after their oc- 
cupation of the provinces of. the Empire, the mu- 
nicipal system upon which it had been based. The 
_, dying out of trade and the exodus of foreign mer- 
~*\) chants had no influence on the ecclesiastical organi- 
\. zation, The cities where the bishops resided became 
poorer and less populous without the bishops them- 
selves feeling the effects. On the contrary, the 
“more that general prosperity declined, the more 
their power and their influence had a chance to — 
_ assert itself. Endowed with a prestige which was 
' the greater because the State had disappeared, sus- 
| tained by donations from their congregations, and 
_ partners with the Carolingians in the governing of 
_\ society, they were in a commanding position by 
virtue of, at one and the same time, their moral 


2 See above, chap. 1. 











CITY ORIGINS | 61 


authority, their economic power, and their political 
activity. | 

When the Empire of Charlemagne foundered, 
their status, far from being adversely affected, was 
made still more secure. The feudal princes, who 
had ruined the power of the Monarchy, did not 
touch that of the Church, for its divine origin 
protected it from their attacks. They feared the 
bishops who could fling at them the terrible weap- 
on of excommunication. They revered them as the 
supernatural guardians of order and justice. In the 
midst of the anarchy of the tenth and eleventh , 
centuries the ascendancy of the Church Aare 
therefore, unimpaired, and it appeared to merit 
that good fortune., To combat the plague of the 
private wars which the Crown was now incapable 
of repressing the bishops organized in their dioceses 
the institution of the “Truce Fomts0d,. 

This prestige of the bishops naturally lent to 


their places of residence—that is to say, to the old- 


Roman cities—considerable importance. It is high- 
ly probable that this was what saved them, In the 
economy of the ninth century they no longer had 
any excuse for existence. In ceasing to be commer- 
cial centers they must have lost, quite evidently, 


3 On this institution, see L. Huberti, Studien zur Rechtsgeschichte 
der Gottesfrieden und Landfrieden, Ansbach, 1892. 


} 


62 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


the greatest part of their population, |/The mer- 
chants who once frequented them, or dwelt there, 
disappeared and with them disappeared the urban 
character which they had still preserved during the 
Merovingian era}{Lay society no longer had the 
least use for them) Round about them the great 
demesnes lived their own life. There is no evidence 
that the State, itself constituted on a purely agri- 
cultural basis, had any cause to be interested in 
their fate. (Ie is quite characteristic, and quite il- 
luminating, that the palaces (palatia) of the Caro- 
lingian princes were not located in the towns, They 
were, without exception, in the country, in the de- 
mesnes of the dynasty: at Herstal, at Jupille, at 
Meersen in the valley of the Meuse; at Ingelheim 
in that of the Rhine; at Attigny in that of the 
Seine; and so on. 

The fame of Aix-la-Chapelle should not lead to 
any illusion as to the character of that locality. 
The resplendency in which it temporarily gloried 
under Charlemagne was due only to its fortune in 
being the favorite residence of the Emperor. After 
the reign of Louis the Pious, it fell back into in- 


significance. It was to become a real city only four 


centuries later. 
\ The State, on its part, in exercising administra- 


tive powers could contribute in no way to the con- — 





| 


CITY ORIGINS 63 


~ tinued existence of the Roman cities. The countries 














which formed the political districts of the Empire 
were without their chief-towns, just as the Empire 
itself was without a capital.’The counts, to whom 
the supervision of them was entrusted, did not set- 
tle down in any fixed spot. They were constantly 
travelling about their districts in order to preside 


over judicial assemblies, to levy taxes, and to raise _ 
troops.\The centers of their administrations were | 


not their places of residence but their persons.)It) 


was therefore of little importance whether they | 


\ 


had or did not have their domicile in a town. Re- | 
cruited from among the great proprietors of the re- / 


sion, they were, after all, most accustomed to live 


on their estates. Their chateaux, like the palaces of 
the Emperors, were customarily in the country.’ 
On the contrary, the immobility which ecclesi- 
astical discipline enforced upon a bishop perma- 
nently held him to the city where was established 
the see of his particular diocese. Though they had 
lost their function in civil administration, the cities 


therefore continued to serve as the key points in 


megious administration. Each diocese comprised 
the territory about the city which contained its 


is particularly true for Northern Europe. In Southern 
id in Italy, on the contrary, where the Roman munici- 
anization had less completely disappeared, the counts or- 


64 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


cathedral, and kept in constant touch with it. The 
change in meaning of the word cévitas from the 
beginning of the ninth century throws interesting 
light on this point. It became synonymous with 
the bishopric and the episcopal city. The phrase 
civitas Paristensis was used to designate the diocese 





of Paris as well as the city of Paris itself, where - 


the bishop had his residence. ‘Chus under this double 
connotation was preserved the memory of the an- 
cient municipal system adopted by the Church for 
her own ends. 

In short, what happened in the empoverished 
and depopulated Carolingian towns is a striking 
parallel of what, in a rather more important thea- 
ter, happened at Rome itself when, in the course 
of the fourth century, the Eternal City had ceased 
to be the capital of the world. In leaving it for Ra- 
venna and then for Constantinople, the emperors 
abandoned it to the Pope. What it no longer was 
in the government of the State, it continued to be 
In the government of the Church. 

\The imperial city became the » pontifical city. Its 
historical prestige enhanced that of the successor 
of St. Peter. Isolated, he seemed the greater, and 
he became at the same time more powerful. Men 
now saw only him; in the absence of the old rulers, 
men now obeyed only him. By continuing to dwell 


CITY ORIGINS 65 


in Rome, he made it hzs Rome, just as each bishop 
made the city where he dwelt hés city. | 
During the last days of the Lower Empire, and 
still more during the Merovingian era, the power 
of the bishops over the city populace consistently 
increased. They had profited by the growing dis- 
organization of civil society to accept, or to arro- 
gate to themselves, an authority which the inhab- 
itants did not take pains to dispute with them, and 
which the State had no interest in and, moreover, 
no means of denying them. The privileges which 
the clergy began to enjoy after the fourth century, 
in the matters of jurisdiction and taxes, enhanced 
still further their status. It became more conspicu- 
ous through the granting of charters of immunity 
which the Frankish kings issued in their favor. By 
virtue of these the bishops were freed from the in- 
_ terference of the counts in their ecclesiastical de- - 
_ mesnes. They were invested from that time on— 
the eighth century—with a complete seigniory 
over their people and their lands. To the ecclesiast- 
ical jurisdiction over the clergy which they already 
had was added lay jurisdiction, entrusted to a tri-v 
_ bunal, created by them, whose principal seat was 
_ fixed, naturally, in the town where ie! had their 
residence. 
When the disappearance of trade, in the ninth 


cE 


a 


a ee 


66 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


century, annihilated the last vestiges of city life 
‘ and put an end to what still remained of a mu- 
nicipal population, the influence of the bishops, 
already so extensive, became unrivalled. Hence- 
' forward the towns were entirely under their con- 
trol. In them were to be found, in fact, practically 
Gate inhabitants dependent more or less directly 
pon the Church. 

‘Though no precise information is available, it is, 
nevertheless, possible to conjecture as to the nature 
of this population. It was composed of the clerics 
of the cathedral church and of the other churches 
grouped nearby; of the monks of the monasteries 
which, especially after the ninth century, came to 
be established, sometimes in great numbers, in the 
see of the diocese; of the teachers and the students 
of the ecclesiastical schools; and finally, of ser- 
vitors and artisans, free or serf, who were indis- 
pensable to the needs of the religious group and to 
the daily existence of the clerical agglomeration.) 

| Almost always there was to be found in the town 
a weekly market whither the peasants from round- 
about brought their produce. Sometimes, even, an_ . 

annual fair was held there.|At the gates a market 
\toll was levied on everything that came in or went 
out. A mint was in operation within the walls. 
There were also to be found there a number of 


CITY ORIGINS 67 


keeps occupied by vassals of the bishop, by his ad- 
vocate or by his castellan. To all of this must be 
added, finally, the granaries and the storehouses 
where were stored the harvests from the monastical 
demesnes brought in, at stated periods, by the ten- 
ant-farmers.\At the great yearly festivals the con- » 
gregation of the diocese poured into the town and 
gave it, for several days, the animation of unaccus- 
tomed bustle and stir.’ | . 
|All this little world accepted the bishop as both 
its spiritual and temporal head. Religious and sec- 
ular authority were united or, to put it better, 
were blended in his person.\ Aided by a Council 
formed of priests and canons, he administered the 
city and the diocese in conformity with the precepts 
of Christian morality. His ecclesiastical tribune; 
presided over by the archdeacon, had singularly 
enlarged its sphere, thanks to the impotency, and 
still more to the favor, of the State. Not only were 
all the clerics subject to it in every particular, but 
to it also pertained jurisdiction over a number of 
5 The towns of the ninth and tenth centuries have not yet been 
adequately studied. What is said of them here, and later, is 
borrowed from various passages in the capitularies as well as 
from certain scattered texts in the chronicles and the lives of the 
Saints. For the towns of Germany, unfortunately much less 
numerous and less important than those of Gaul, the reader 
should consult the interesting work of S. Rietschel, Die Civitas 


auf deutschem Boden bis zum Ausgange der Karolingerzeit, 
Leipzig, 1894. 


ut 


68 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


matters affecting the laity: matters of marriage, 
of wills, of civil position, ete. The province of the 
lay court, which was presided over either by the 
castellan or the advocate, had profited by a similar 
increase in scope. After the reign of Louis the Pious 
its jurisdiction had been enlarged by gradual in- 
fringements which the more and more flagrant dis- 
orders of the public administration explain and 
justify. Those affected by the charters of immunity 
were not the only ones subject thereto. It seems 
quite certain that, at least within the actual limits 
of the town, everybody came under its jurisdiction 
and that it had been substituted, zz fact, for the 
jurisdiction which the count still possessed, 77 theo- 
ry, over the freemen.° In addition, the bishop en- 
joyed very loosely defined police powers, under 
which he supervised the markets, regulated the 
levying of tolls, took care of the bridges and the 
ramparts.\Jn short, there was no longer any field 
in the administration of the town wherein, whether 
by law or by prerogative, he did not intervene as 
the guardian of order, peace, and the common weal. ) 
thepcratic form of government had completely 

replaced the municipal regimen of antiquity. The 


ba 


6 I am seeking, naturally, to characterize only the general situa- 
tion. I am aware that numerous exceptions must be made; but © 
they cannot modify the general impression which comes from an _ 
examination of the data available. 


CITY ORIGINS 69 


populace was governed by its bishop and no longer 
asked to have even the least share in that govern- 
“ment. True, it sometimes happened that a disturb- 
“ance broke out in the town. Bishops were assailed 
in their palaces and sometimes even obliged to flee. 
But it is stretching a point to find in these events 
the least trace of a municipal spirit. They are 
‘rather to be explained by intrigues or personal ri- 
valries. 

It would be thoroughly fallacious to consider 
them the precursors of the communal movement 
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Moreover, 
they were very rare. Everything indicates that the 
episcopal administration was in general beneficent 
and popular. 

This administration, as pointed out above, was 
not confined to the limits of the town. It extended 
throughout the bishopric. The town was its center, // 
but the diocese was its sphere) Under it the urban 
population enjoyed in no particular a privileged 
status. [he regimen under which it lived was the 
regimen of the common law. The knights, the serfs, 
and the freemen whom it contained were distin- 
guished from their congeners outside only by being : 
grouped in one locality. Of the special laws and \. 
the autonomy which the bourgeoisie of the Middle 
Ages was to enjoy, there was not yet a single sa) 











ee 


"70 MEDIEVAL CITIES 
to be discovered. The word czvés (citizen) by which 
contemporary texts designated the inhabitant of 
the town was only a simple topographical appella- 
tion; it did not yet have legal significance.’ 
, \'These towns were fortresses as well as episcopal 
Y residences. In the last days of the Roman Empire 
they had been enclosed by walls as a protection 
against the barbarians. These walls were still in 
existence almost everywhere and the bishops busied 
themselves with keeping them up or with restoring 
them with the greater zeal in that the incursions of 
the Saracens and the Norsemen had given increas- 
ingly impressive proof, during the ninth century, 
of the need of protection. The old Roman enceintes 
continued, therefore, to protect the towns against 
new perils. 

i ) Their form remained, under Charlemagne, what 
it had been under Constantine. As a general rule, 
it took the shape of a rectangle surrounded by ram- 
parts flanked by towers and communicating with 
the outside by gates, customarily to the number of 
four. The space so enclosed was very restricted and 
the length of its sides rarely exceeded four to five 
hundred yards.* Moreover, it was far from being 


7S. Rietschel, Die Civitas auf deutschem Boden bis zum Aus- 
gange der Karolingerzett, p. 93- 
8 A. Blanchet, Les enceintes romaines de la Gaule, Paris, 1907. 





eo 






CITY ORIGINS 71 


ntirely built up; between the houses cultivated 

‘fields and gardens were to be found. The outskirts 

(suburbium ), which in the Merovingian era still | 
extended beyond the walls, had disappeared, 
Thanks to their defences, the towns could almost 

_always victoriously oppose the assaults of the in- 

_vaders from the north and the south. It will suf- 

fice here to recall the famous siege of Paris by the 

Norsemen in 885. | 

The episcopal cities naturally served as a refuge 
for the populations of their neighborhood upon “ 
the approach of the barbarians. There monks came, 
even from very far away, to seek an asylum, as did, 
for example, those from St. Vaast in 887 at Beau- 
vais and those from St. Quentin at Laon.” 

In the midst of the insecurity and the disorders 
which imparted so lugubrious a character to the. 
second half of the ninth century, it therefore fel 

to the towns to fulfill a true mission of protection. 
They were, in every sense of the word, the ram- 
parts of a society invaded, under tribute, and ter- 
tTorized. Soon, from another cause, they were not to 
be alone in filling that rdle. 

| It is obvious that the anarchy of the ninth cen- 


©L. Halphen, Paris sous les premiers Capétiens, Paris, 1909, p. 5. 
17. H. Labande, Histoire de Beauvais et de ses institutions 
communales, Paris, 1892, p. 7; W. Vogel, Die Normannen und 
das frainkische Reich, Heidelberg, 1906, p. 271. 


72 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


tury hastened the inevitable decomposition of the 
Frankish State, ‘The counts, who were the biggest 
proprietors of they districts, profited by existing | 
conditions to 5A to themselves a complete 
autonomy, to make of their office an hereditary | 
estate, to combine in their hands, with the private 
powers they exercised over their own demesnes, the | 
public powers which were delegated to them, and | 
finally to amalgamate under their domination, in | 
a single principality, all the counties they could lay 
hold of.| The Carolingian Empire was thus par- 
celled out, after the middle of the ninth century, 
into a number of territories subject to as many local 
dynasties, and attached to the Crown only by the 
V fragile bond of feudal homage. The State was too 
feeble to resist this disintegration. It was accom- 
plished, unquestionably, by means of violence and 
abominable perfidies. Nevertheless it was, on the 
whole, beneficial for society. In seizing power, the 
princes forthwith accepted the obligations it im- 
posed. Their most evident interest was to defend 
and protect the lands and the people who had be- 
come their lands and their people. They did not 
fail in a task which a purely selfish concern for 
personal power had imposed upon them. As their 
power grew and was consolidated, they became 
more and more preoccupied with giving their prin- 


; 


g 
4 


i 


wer —- - 


— os 


—_ 


Nee aE 





CITY ORIGINS 73 


cipalities an organization capable of guaranteeing 
public order and peace;) in 

| The first need which was manifest was that of 
defence, as much against the Saracens or the Norse- 
men as against the neighboring princes. Fortresses, 
therefore, sprang up Bee ncte at the beginning 
of the ninth century. "| “Contemporary texts give 
them the most eee names,: castellum, castrum, 
oppidum, urbs, municipium;}the most usual and 
in any case the most technical of these appellations 
is that of burgus, a word borrowed from the Ger- 
man by the Latin of the Lower Empire and which 
is preserved in all the modern languages: burg, 
borough, bourg, borgo.” ; 

|Of these burgs of the late Middle Ages no trace 


however, fortunately make it possible to form a 
fairly accurate picture of them. They were walled 


) ihren 
aa 
4 sy 
' 


remains in our day. The sources of information, 


enclosures of somewhat restricted perimeter, cus- ’ 


tomarily circular in form and surrounded by a 
moat.|In th the center was to be found a strong-tower 


11 Before the arrival of the Norsemen, there were not any, or 
hardly any, fortified localities outside of the episcopal cities. 
Hariulphe, Chronique de labbaye de Saint-Riquier, edit. F. Lot, 
Paris, 1894, p. 118. 

12 On the meaning of these words, see K. Hegel, Newes Archiv 
der Gesellschaft fir altere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 1892, Vol. 
XVIII, and G. Des Marez, “Le sens juridique du mot oppidum,” 
Festschrift fir H. Brunner, Berlin, 1910. 


74 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


and a keep, the last redoubt of defence in case of 
attack. A permanent garrison of knights (mdéétes 
castrenses) Was kept stationed there. This was 
placed under the orders of a castellan (castel- 
lanus).'The prince had a home (dovzs) in each of 
the burgs of his territory where he stayed with his 
retinue in the course of the continual changes of 
residence which war or administerial duties forced 
upon him. Very often a chapel, or a church flanked 
by the buildings necessary to house the clergy, 
raised its belfry above the battlements of the ram- 
part. Sometimes there were also to be found by the 
side of it quarters intended for the judicial assem- 
blies whose members came, at fixed periods, from 
outside to assemble in the burg. Finally, what was 
never lacking were a granary and cellars where was 
kept, to supply the necessities of a siege should the 
case arise and to furnish subsistence to the prince 
during his stays, the produce of the neighboring 
demesnes which he held. [Prestations in kind levied 
on the peasants of the district assured the subsist- 


ence of the garrison, on its part. The upkeep of the © 


walls devolved upon these same peasants who were 
compelled to do the work by statute labor. 


Although from country to country the picture, — 


13 H. Pirenne, “Les villes flamandes avant le XII° siécle,” An- 


nales de l’Est et du Nord, 1905, Vol. I, p. 12. 





4 | 
CITY ORIGINS 75 


which has just been drawn, naturally differed in 
details, the same essential traits were to be found 
everywhere. The similarity between the bouwrgs of 
Flanders and the Jdoroughs of Anglo-Saxon Eng- 
land is a striking one.” And this similarity unques- 
tionably proves that the same needs brought in 
their train like results everywhere. 

As can be easily seen, the burgs were, above all, 
military a to this original func- 
tion was early added that of being administrative” 
centers, {The castellan ceased to be solely the com- 
mandant of the knights of the castral garrison. The 
prince delegated to him financial and juridical 
authority over a more or less extensive district , 
round about the walls of the burg and which took, 
by the tenth century, the name of castellany. The 
castellany was related to the burg as the bishopric 
was related to the town. In case of war, its inhab- 
itants found there a refuge; in time of peace, there / 


14F, W. Maitland, Township and Borough, 1898. The reader 
should also compare the burgs of the West with those built in 
the tenth century as a defence against the Slavs, along the Elbe 
and the Saale, by Henry the Fowler. D. Schafer, “Die Milites 
agrarii des Witukinds,” Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie, 
1905, p. 572. For the social réle of the burgs, we restrict ourselves 
to citing the following text which seems to be thoroughly char- 
acteristic ; it had to do with the founding in 996 of Cateau- 
Cambrésis : “ut esset obstaculum latronibus praesidiumque lber- 
tatis circum et circa rusticanis cultoribus.’ “Gesta episcoporum 
Cameracensium,” Monumenta Germaniae historica, Vol. VII, p. 


"450. 


76 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


they repaired to take part in the assemblies of 
justice or to pay off the prestations to which they 
_, /were subject; /Nevertheless bitte did not show 
'/ the slightest urban character Its population com- 
| prised, aside from the knights and the clerics who 
made up its essential part, only men employed in 
| their service and whose number was certainly of 
very little importance. ‘It was a fortress popula- 
tion; it was not a city populationY |Neither com- 
\ merce nor industry was possible or even conceiv- 
. able in such an environment. It produced nothing 
of itself, lived by revenues from the surrounding 
country, and had no other economic role than that 
_of a simple consumer.| 
"It is therefore a safe conclusion that the period 
which opened with the Carolingian era knew cities 
| neither in the social sense, nor in the economic 
sense, nor in the legal sense of that word. The — 
.|, towns and the burgs were merely fortified places 
h ‘and headquarters of administration. Their inhab- 
| | itants enjoyed neither special laws nor institutions 
of their own, and their manner of living did not — 
distinguish them in any way from the rest off 
1} yi society. | | 
“Commercial and industrial activity were com- | 
pletely foreign to them. In no respect were they | 
out of key with the agricultural civilization of their | 


n 


| 






| 
| 
| 





ee 


CITY ORIGINS 77 


times. The groups they formed were, after all, of 
trifling importance. It is not possible, in the lack 
of reliable information, to give an exact figure, but 
everything indicates that the population of the 
burgs never consisted of more than a few hundred 


men and that that of the towns probably did not ” 


pass the figure of two to three thousand souls. | 

_The towns and the burgs played, however, an 
tial role in the history of cities. They were, so 
to speak, the stepping-stones thereto.| Round about 
their walls cities were to take shape after the eco- 
nomic renaissance, whose first symptoms appeared 
in the course of the tenth century, had made itself 
manifest. 


Wy Ba, 


Chapter IV 
The Revival of Commerce 


/ 
lay HE end of the ninth century was the moment 
/ when the economic development of Western 
Europe that followed the closing of the Mediter- 
ranean was at its lowest ebb. It was also the mo- 
ment when the social disorganization caused by 
the raids of the barbarians and the accompanying 
political anarchy reached a maximum,// 
| The tenth century, if not an era of recovery, was 
at least an era of stabilization and relative peace. 
The surrender of Normandy to Rollo (912) 
marked in the West the end of the great Scandi- 
navian invasions, while in the East Henry the 
Fowler and Otto I checked and held the Slavs 
along the Elbe and the Hungarians in the valley 
of the Danube (934, 955). At the same time the 
feudal system, which had definitely displaced the 
monarchy, was established in France on the débris 
of the old Carolingian order. In Germany, on the 
contrary, the somewhat later development of so- 
ciety enabled the princes of the House of Saxony 
to resist the encroachments of the lay aristocracy. 
On their side they had the powerful influence of 


the bishops and used it to restore the ascendancy of 


THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 79 


the Monarchy. In assuming the title of Roman 
_ Emperor, they laid claim to the universal authority 

which Charlemagne had exercised. 

If all this was not accomplished without bitter 
conflicts, nevertheless it was decidedly productive 
of good. Europe ceased to be overrun by ruthless 

_ hordes. She recovered confidence in the future, 
and, with that confidence, courage and ambition. _ 
The date of the renewal of a cooperative activity: 
on the part of the people might well be ascribed to 
the tenth century. At that date, likewise, the social — 
authorities began once more to acquit themselves” 
in the role which it was their place to play. From 
now on, in feudal as well as in episcopal principal- 
ities, the first traces could be seen of an organized 
effort to better the condition of the people. The 
prime need of that era, hardly rising above an- 
archy, was the need of peace, the most fundamen- 
tal and the most essential of all the needs of 
society. 

The first Truce of God was proclaimed in 980. ra 
Private wars, the greatest of the plagues that har- 
assed those troubled times, were energetically com- 
bated by the territorial counts in France and by 
the prelates of the imperial Church in Germany. 

_Dark though the prospect still was, the tenth 
tentury nevertheless saw in outline the picture 


80 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


which the eleventh century presents. The famous 
legend of the terrors of the year 1000 is not devoid, 
in this respect, of symbolic significance.\It is doubt- 
less untrue that men, expected the end of the world 
in the year 100 0. Yet the century which came in 
at that date is characterized, in contrast with the 
preceding one, by a recrudescence of activity so 
marked that it could pass for the vigorous and joy- 
ful awakening of asociety long oppressed by a | 
nightmare of anguish, In every demesne was to be 
seen the same burst of energy and, for that matter, 
Vv of optimism, The Church, revivified by the Cluni- 
sian reform, undertook to purify herself of the 
' abuses which had crept into her discipline and 
to shake. off the bondage in which the Emperors 
‘ held her. A mystic enthusiasm, of which she was 
the inspiration, animated her congregations and | 
launched them upon the heroic and grandiose en- 
terprise of the Crusades which brought Western 
Christianity to grips with Islam. The military | 
spirit of feudalism led her to initiate and to suc- 





ceed in epic undertakings. Norman knights went 
to battle with Byzantines and Moslems in South- . 
ern Italy, and founded there the principalities out — 
of which was later to arise the Kingdom of Sicily 
_ other Normans, with whom were associated ‘fly 
\\ings and Frenchmen from the North, conqr 


THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE Sik, 


N 


England under the leadership of Duke William. | 
South of the Pyrenees the Christians drove before 
them the Saracens of Spain; Toledo and Valencia / 
fell to their hands (1072-1 109 i 
//Such undertakings testify not only to energy and ) 
vigor of spirit; they testify also to the health of 
society. They would have obviously been impos- J 
sible without that native strength which is one of 
the characteristics of the eleventh century. The 
fecundity of families seemed, at this date, to be as 
general among the nobility as among the peasants. 
Younger sons abounded everywhere, feeling them- 
selves crowded for room on their natal soil and 
eager to try their fortunes abroad. Everywhere 
were to be met adventurers in search of gain or 
work. [he armies were full of mercenaries, “Cote- 
relli” or “Brabantiones,” letting their services to 
whoever wished to employ them. From Flanders 
and Holland bands of peasants were setting out, 
by the beginning of the twelfth century, to drain 
the Mooren on the banks of the Elbe. In every part 
_ of Europe arms were offered in superabundant 
_ quantity and this is undoubtedly the explanation 
of the increasing number, from then on, of great 
reclamation projects in clearing land and diking Mf 
streams. m 
It does not appear that, from the Roman era to 





82 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


the eleventh century, the area of cultivated land 
had been perceptibly increased. Save in the Ger- 
manic countries, the monasteries had hardly alter- 
ed, in this respect, the existing situation. They were 
almost always established on old estates and did 
‘nothing to decrease the extent of the woods, the 
heaths and the marshes contained within their de- 
mesnes. But it was quite a different matter when 
once the increase of population permitted these 


unproductive terrains to be put to good use.| Just 


about the year 1000 there began a period of recla- 
¥ mation which was to continue, with steady in- 
) crease, up to the end of the twelfth century. Europe 
‘ “colonized”’ herself, thanks to the increase of her 
\ inhabitants. The princes and the great proprietors 
turned to the founding of new towns, where 
flocked the “‘younger sons” in quest of lands to 
cultivate.” The great forests began to be cleared. 
In Flanders appeared, about 1150, the first pol- 
ders.” (A “polder” is diked land, reclaimed from 
the sea.) The Order of the Cistercians, founded in 
1098, gave itself over at once to reclamation pro- 
jects and the clearing of the land. » 


Pat 


1 Qn the increase in population during the eleventh century, see 
Lambert de Hersfeld, Annales, edit. O. Holder-Egger, Hanover, 
1894, p. 121; “Suger,” Recueil des Historiens de la France, Vol. 
XII, p. 54; Herman de Tournai, Monumenta Germaniae his- 
torica, Vol. XIV, p. 344. 

2H. Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, Vol. I, 4th edit., pp. 148, 300. 





THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 83 


It is easy to see that the increase in population 
and the burst of renewed general activity of which 
it was both cause and effect, operated from the very 
first to the benefit of an agricultural economy. But 
this condition should, before long, have had_its 
effect upon trade as well./The eleventh century, in 
fact, brings us face to face with a real commercial 
revival. This revival received its impetus from two 
centers of activity, one located in the south and the 
other in the north: Venice on one side and the 
Flemish Coast on the other.|And this is merely an- 
other way of saying that\it was the result of an ex- 
ternal stimulus.) The contact with foreign trade, 
maintained at these two points, first caused it to 
appear and spread. Quite likely it could have come 
about in some other way. Commercial activity 
might have been revived by virtue of the trend of 
general economic life. The fact is, however, that. 
this wasn’t the case. Just|as the trade of the West 
disappeared with the shutting off of its foreign 
markets, just so it was renewed when these markets 
"were reopened. _\\ | sey 


7 
Venice, whose effect was felt from the very first, 


has a well-recognized and singular place in the eco- 
_ nomic history of Europe. Like Tyre, ‘Venice shows 
an exclusively commercial character. Her first in- 
habitants, fleeing before the approach of the Huns, 


« 


it 





eee 


———— 


a 


MEDIEVAL CITIES 


Ane Goths and the Lombards, had sought (in the 
fifth and sixth centuries) a refuge on the barren 


islets of the lagoons at Rialto, at Olivolo, at Spina- 


lunga, at Dorsoduro.* To exist in these marshes / 


they had to tax their ingenuity and to fight against, 
Nature herself. Everything was wanting: even 


drinking water was lacking. But the sea was enough 
for the existence of a folk who knew how to manage 


_things,![Fishing and the preparation of salt sup- 
plied an immediate means of livelihood to the Ve- 


netians. They were able to procure wheat by ex- 
changing their products with the inhabitants of 
the neighboring shores.) 

Trade was thus forced upon them by the very 
conditions under which they lived, And they had 
the energy and the genius to turn to profit the un- 
limited possibilities which trade offered them. By 


| the eighth century the group of islets they occupied 


was already thickly populated enough to become — 


‘’ the see of a special diocese.// 
\ At the date when the city was founded, all Italy | 
still belonged to the Byzantine Empire. Thanks to — 


a 


her insular situation, the conquerors who succes- — 


sively overran the Peninsula—first the Lombards, — 








3. M. Hartmann, “Die wirtschaftlichen Ravedee Ve 
Vierteljahrschrift fiir Social- und Wirtschaftsgeshichte, 190¢ 
Vol. II. ’ 


THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 85 


_ then Charlemagne, and finally, still later, the Ger- 
_man emperors—were not successful in their at- 
tempts to gain possession. She remained, therefore, 
under the sovereignty of Constantinople, thus 
forming at the lower end of the Adriatic and at the 
foot of the Alps an isolated outpost of Byzantine 
civilization, (While Western Europe was detaching 
herself from the East, she continued to be part of 
of it. And this circumstance is of capital import- 
-ance. The consequence was that Venice did not 
cease to gravitate in the orbit of Constantinople. 
Across the waters, she was subject to the attrac- 
tion of that great city and herself grew great un- 
der its influence. 

: |_Constantinople, even in the eleventh century, \ 
appears not only as a great city, but as the greatest \ 
city of the whole Mediterranean basin. Her popu--* 
lation was not far from reaching the figure of a 
million inhabitants, and that population was sin- 
-gularly active.* She was not content, as had been 
the population of Rome under the Republic and 
the Empire, to consume without producing. She 
gave herself over, with a zeal which the fiscal sys- 


4A. Andréadés, De la population de Constantinople sous les 
empereurs byzantins, Rovigo, 1920. An economic history of Con- 
stantinople is still lacking. For want of something better, L. 
Brentano, Die byzantinische Volkswirtschaft, Leipzig, 1917, may 
be consulted. 


86 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


tem shackled but did not choke, not only to trading 
but to industry.| For Constantinople was a great 
port and a first-rate manufacturing center as well 
as a political capital. Here were to be found every 
manner of life and every form of social activity. 
Alone, in the Christian world, she presented a pic- 
ture analogous to that of great modern cities with 
all the complexities, all the defects but also with 
all the refinements of an essentially urban civiliza- 
tion,|\An uninterrupted shipping kept her in touch 
with the coasts of the Black Sea, Asia Minor, 
Southern Italy, and the shores of the Adriatic. Her 
fleets of war secured to her the mastery of the sea, 
without which she would not have been able to 
live. As long as she remained powerful, she was 
able to maintain, in the face of Islam, her do- 
minion over all the waters of the Eastern Medi- 
terranean.| 

It is easy to understand how Venice profited by 
her alliance with a world so different from the 
European West. To it she not only owed the pros- 
perity of her commerce, but from it she first learned 
those higher forms of civilization, that perfected 
technique, that business enterprise, and that polit- 
ical and administrative organization w’iich gave 
her a place apart in the Europe of the Middle Ages. 
By the eighth century she was devoting herself 





THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 87 


_with greater and greater success to the provision- 
ing of Constantinople. Her ships transported 
thither the products of the countries which were 


contiguous to her on the east and the west: wheat 


and wine from Italy, wood from Dalmatia, salt 
from the lagoons, and, in spite of the prohibitions 


| 
| 
{ 


| 


of the Pope and the Emperor himself, slaves which 
she easily secured among the Slavic peoples of the 
shores of the Adriatic. Thence they brought back, 
in return, the precious fabrics of Byzantine manu- 
facture, as well as spices which Asia furnished to 
Constantinople. By the tenth century the activity 
of the port had already attained extraordinary pro- 
portions.’ And with the extension of trade, the love 
of gain became irresistible. No scruple had any 


weight with the Venetians.| Their religion was a 


religion of business men. It mattered little to them 
that the Moslems were the enemies of Christ, if 


business with them was profitable. After the ninth 


century they began more and more to frequent 


Aleppo, Cairo, Damascus, Kairwan, Palermo. 


Treaties of commerce assured their merchants a 
privileged status in the markets of Islam. | 

By the start of the eleventh century, the power 
of Venice was making as marvellous progress as her 


5R. Heynen, Zur Entstehung des Kapitalismus in Venedig, 
Stuttgart, 1905, p. 15. 


88 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


wealth. Under the Doge Pietro II Orseolo, she 
cleared the Adriatic of the Slavic pirates, subjected 
Istria and had at Zara, Veglia, Arbe, Trau, Spala- 
to, Curzola, and Lagosta settlements or military 
establishments. John the Deacon extols the splen- 
dor and the glory of Venetia Aurea, and Guglielmo 
of Apuleia vaunts the city “rich in money, rich in 
men,” and declares that ‘‘no people in the world 
are more valorous in naval ane more skilful 
in the art of guiding ships on the sea.’ 

It was inevitable that the ant: economic 
movement, of which Venice was the center, should 
be communicated to the countries of Italy from 
which she was separated only by the lagoons. There 
she obtained the wheat and wine which she either 
consumed herself or exported, and she naturally 
sought to create there a market for the eastern mer- 
chandise which her mariners unloaded in greater 


and greater quantity on the quays by the Po. Shé 


entered into relations with Pavia, which was not 
long in being animated by her infectious activity.° 
She obtained from the German emperors the right 
to trade freely first with the nearby cities and then 
with all Italy, as well as the shipping monopoly 
for all goods arriving in her port. 


6 R. Heynen, op. cit., p. 23. 


THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 89 


In the course of the tenth century Lombardy 
was inspired, by her example, with commercial 
life. Trade rapidly spread from Pavia to the neigh- 
boring cities. All of them made haste to share in 
the traffic of which Venice had given them the out- 
standing example and which it was to her interest 
to stimulate among them. The spirit of enterprise 
developed in one place after another. 

It was not only products of the soil which kept 
the commercial relations with Venice flourishing. 
Industry was already commencing to appear. Early 
in the eleventh century, for example, Lucca turned 
to. the manufacture of cloths and kept at it until 
much later. Probably a great many more details 
would be known about the beginnings of this 
economic revival in Lombardy if our sources of 
information were not so deplorably meagre.’ 

Preponderant as the Venetian influence had been 

‘in Italy, it did not make itself felt there exclusive- 
ly. The South of the Peninsula beyond Spoleto and 
Benevento was still, and so remained until the ar- 
rival of the Normans in the eleventh century, under 
the power of the Byzantine Empire. Bari, Taren- 


tum, Naples and above all Amalfi, kept up rela- 


tions with Constantinople similar to those of Ven- 


7K. Schaube, Handelsgeschichte der romanischen Volker, p. 61. 


aici 


90 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


ice. They were very active centers of trade and, no 
more than Venice, did not hesitate to traffic with 
Moslem ports.° 

\ Their shipping was, naturally, fated to find com- 
petitors sooner or later among the inhabitants of 
the coastal towns situated further to the north. 
And, in fact, after the beginning of the eleventh 


century we see first Genoa, then Pisa soon after, 


turning their attention to the sea,|In 93 5 the Sara- 
cen pirates had again pillaged Genoa. But the mo- 
ment was approaching when she was in her turn 
to take the offensive. There could be no question of 
her concluding commercial arrangements, as had 
Venice or Amalfi, with the enemies of her Faith. 
The mystic, excessive scrupulousness of the West 
in religious matters did not permit it, and too many 
hates had accumulated in the course of the cen- 
turies. The sea could be opened up only by force 
of arms. 

\In 1015-16 an expedition was undertaken by 
Genoa, in cooperation with Pisa, against Sardinia. 
Twenty years later, in 1034, they got possession 
for a time of Bona on the coast of Africa; the 
Pisans, on their part, victoriously entered the port 
of Palermo in 1062 and destroyed its arsenal. 


8 W. von Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen-age, 
Vol. I, p. 98. 








THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE gl 


_In 1087 the fleets of the two cities, encouraged 
by Pope Victor III, attacked Mehdia.” All these 
expeditions were due as much to religious enthu- 
siasm as to the spirit of adventure. With a quite 
different viewpoint from that of the Venetians, the 
Genoese and the Pisans considered themselves sol- * 
diers of Christ and of the Church, opponents of | 
Islam. They believed they saw the Archange 
Gabriel and St. Peter leading them into battle with 
the Infidels, and it was only after having massacred 
the “priests of Mahomet” and pillaged the mosque 
of Mehdia that they signed an advantageous treaty 
of commerce. The Cathedral of Pisa, built after 
this triumph, admirably symbolized both the mys- 
ticism of the conquerors and the wealth which their 
shipping was beginning to bring to them. Pillars 
and precious marble brought from Africa served 
to decorate it—it seems as if they had wished to 
attest by its splendor the revenge of Christianity 
upon the Saracens whose opulence was a thing of 
scandal and of envy. Those, at least, are the senti- 
ments which an enthusiastic contemporary poem 


rani 


9 W. von Heyd, of. cit., p. 1213; K. Schaube, of. cit., Dp. 49. 
10 EF. Du Meéril, Poésies populaires latines du Moyen-age, Paris, 
1847, P. 239. 





2s MEDIEVAL CITIES 


Unde tua in aeternum splendebit ecclesia 

Auro, gemnis, margaritis et pallits splendida* 

Before the counterattack of Christianity, Islam 
thus gave way little by little) The launching of the 
first Crusade (1096)..marked its definite recoil. In 
1097.a-Genoese fleet sailed towards Antioch, bring- 
ing to the Crusaders reinforcements and supplies. 
Two years later Pisa sent out vessels “under the 


orders of the Pope” to deliver Jerusalem. From — 


that time on the whole Mediterranean was 
opened, or rather reopened, to western shipping. 


As in the Roman era, communications were fe- 
‘Stablished from one end to the other of that 
essentially | European errewummmanig</ () 

~The Empire of. Islam, insofar as the sea_was 
concerned, came to an end. To be sure, the polit- 
_ ical “and-religious results of the Crus Cratene _were 
ephemeral The kingdom of Jerusalem and the 
_ principalities of Edessa and Antioch were 12con- 
quered by the Moslems in the twelfth century. 


But the sea remained in the hands of the Christians 


LuBhey were the onétchonelt taconite Ryne . 


mastery over it. All the shipping in the ports of the 
Levant came gradually under their control. Their 
commercial establishments multiplied with sur- 


* “Thy church will be resplendent for eternity, 
Dazzling with gold, with gems, with pearls and precious 


cloths.” 
Ris 


\ 
t 








THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 93 


prising rapidity in the ports of Syria, Egypt and [ 


the isles of the Ionian Sea. The conquest of Corsica | 


(1091), of Sardinia (1022) and of Sicily (1058 | 


1090) took away from the Saracens the bases of 
operations which, since the ninth century, had en- 
abled them to keep the West in a state of block- 
ade. ‘Fhe ships of Genoa and Pisa kept the sea 


routes Open. They patronize the markets of the 
ast, whither came the products of Asia, both by 
caravan and by the ships of the Red Sea and the 


Persian Gulf, and frequented in their turn the 
ereat port of Byzantium. [he capture of Amalfi 





by the Normans (1073), in putting an end to the - 


commerce of that city, freed them from her rivalry,' 
(But their r progress immediately aroused the jeal- 


ousy of Venice] She could not bear to share with 
these newcomers a trade in which she laid claim to 
a monopoly. It was of no moment that she pro- 
fesse#the same Faith, belonged to the same people 
and spoke the same language; since they had be- 
come rivals she saw in them only enemies. In the 
' spring of the year 1100 a ns uadron, lying 


in wait before Rhodes for the return of the fleet 





which Pisa had sent to Jerusalem, fell upon it un-. 


awares and sank without pity a large number of 
vessels.” ‘So began. between the maritimecities a 


- RENT es 


11 K, Schaube, op. cit., p. 125. 


“pmee 


oad 


04 MEDIEVAL CITIES 
conflict which was to last as long as their pros- 


per ‘The Mediterranean was no more to know 


at mT peace which the Empire of the Caesars 
oF once enjoined upon her. The divergence of 
interests was hereafter to sustain on the sea a hos- 
tility, sometimes secret and sometimes openly de- 
clared, between the rivals who contested for su- 
premacy. The quarrels of the Italian republics of 
the Middle Ages are still duplicated in modern 
times by the continued wrangling of the States 
whose coasts the Mediterranean washes. 
\_In.developing, maritime commerce must natur- 
ally have become more generalized. By the begin- 
ning of the twelfth century it had reached the 
shores of France and Spain. After the long stag- 
nation into which the city had fallen at the end of 
the Merovingian period, the old port of Marseilles 


took on new life. In Catalonia, Barcelona, out of - 


which the kings of Aragon had driven the Mos- 
lems, profited in turn by the opening up of the sea. 
However, Italy undoubtedly kept the upper hand 
in that first €conomic revival. Lombardy, where 


from Venice on the east_and Pisa and Genoa on 
the west, all the commercial movements of the 
Mediterranean flowed and were blended into one, — 


flourished with an extraordinary exuberance. \On 


eat ee, 


aan = 


THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 95 


_ that wonderful plain cities bloomed with the same 


vigor as the harvests. The fertility of the soil made 


possible for them an unlimited expansion, and at 


the same time the ease of obtaining markets fa- 
vored both the importation of raw materials 


and the exportation of manufactured products. 
_ There, commerce gave rise to industry, and as it 
_ developed, Bergamo, Cremona, Lodi, Verona, and 
all the old towns, all the old Roman munici pia, 
— took on new life, far more vigorous than that which 
had animated them in antiquity. Soon their sur- 
plus production and their fresh energy were seek- 


ing to expand abroad. In the south Tuscany was 


_ won. In the north new routes were laid out across 
the Alps. By the passes of the Spliigen, St. Bernard 
_and the Brenner, their merchants were to bring to 
_ the continent of Europe that same healthy stimu- 








_lus which had come to them from the sea.** They 


followed those natural routes marked by river 
courses—the Danube to the east, the Rhine to 
the north, and the Rhone to the west. (In 1074 
Italian merchants, undoubtedly Lombards, are 
made mention of at Paris;** and at the beginning 
of the twelfth century the fairs of Flanders were 


12A, Schulte, Geschichte der Handelsbeziehungen zwischen 
W estdeutschland und Italien, Leipzig, 1900, Vol. I, p. 80. 
13K, Schaube, op. cit., p. 90. 


96 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


already drawing a considerable number of their 
compatriots.”* 

Nothing could be more natural than this ap- 
pearance of southerners on the Flemish coast. It 
was a consequence of the attraction which trade 
spontaneously exerts upon trade. 

_It has already been shown that, during the Caro- 
lingian era, the Netherlands had given evidence of 
a commercial activity not to be found anywhere 
else.*® This is easily explained by the great number 
of rivers which flow through that country and 
which there unite their waters before emptying into 
the sea: the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt. 
England and the Scandinavian countries were so 
near that land of large and deep estuaries that their 
mariners naturally frequented it at an early date. ) 
It was to them, as we have seen above, that the 
ports of Duurstede and Quentovic owed their im- 
portance. But this importance was ephemeral. It 
could not survive the period of the Norseman inva- 
sions. [he easier access was to a country, the more 
it lured the invaders and the more it had to suffer 
from their devastations. The geographical situa- 
tion which, at Venice, had safeguarded commercial — 


14 Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, 
Comte de Flandre, edit. H. Pirenne, Paris, 1891, p. 28. 9 
15 See above, chap. 11. 


THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 97 


prosperity was, here, naturally due to contribute to 
its destruction. 

_ The invasions of the Norsemen had been only 
the first manifestation of the need of expansion 
felt by the Scandinavian peoples. Their overflow- 
ing energy had driven them forth, towards West- 
ern Europe and Russia simultaneously, upon ad- 
ventures of pillage and conquest. They were not 
mere pirates. They aspired, as had the Germanic 
tribes before them with regard to the Roman Em- 


_ pire, to settle in countries more rich and fertile than, 


: 
4 


was their homeland, and there to create colonies for — 
the surplus population which their own country 
could no longer support. In this undertaking they 
eventually succeeded. To the east, the Swedes set 
foot along those natural routes which led from the 
Baltic to the Black Sea by way of the Neva, Lake 
Ladoga, the Lovat, the Volchof, the Dvina and 
the Dnieper. To the west, the Danes and the 
Norwegians colonized the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms 
north of the Humber. In France, they had ceded 
to them by Charles the Simple the country on the 
Channel which took from them the name of Nor- 
mandy, 

These successes had for their result the orienta- 
tion in a new direction of the activity of the Scan- 
dinavians. Starting at the beginning of the tenth 


98 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


century, they turned away from war to devote 
themselves to trade. le." Their ships plowed all the 
seas of the North and they had nothing to fear 
from rivals since they alone, among the peoples 
whose shores those seas bathed, were navigators. 
It is enough to peruse the delightful tales of the 
Sagas to get an idea of the hardihood and the skill 
of the barbarian mariners whose adventures and 
exploits they recount. 

Each spring, once the water was open, they put 
out to sea. They were to be met in Iceland, in Ire- 
land, in England, in Flanders, at the mouths of 
the Elbe, the Weser, and the'Vistula, on the islands 
of the Baltic Sea, at the foot of the Gulf of Bosnia 
and the Gulf of Finland. They had settlements at 
Dublin, at Hamburg, at Schwerin, on the island 
of Gotland; thanks to them, the current of trade, 
which starting from Byzantium and Bagdad 
crossed Russia by way of Kiev and Novgorod, was 
extended up to the shores of the North Sea and 
there made felt its beneficent influence. (in all his- 
tory there is hardly a more curious phenomenon 
than that effect wrought on Northern Europe by 


16 W. Vogel, “Zur nord- und westeuropdischen Seeschiffahrt im 
friheren Mittelalter,” Hansische Geschichtsblatter, 1907, Vol. 
XII, p. 170; A. Bugge, * ‘Die nordeuropdischen Verkehrswege 
im frithen Mittelalter,” Vierteljahrschrift fir Social- und Wirt- 
schaftsgeschichte, 1906, Vol. IV p. 227. 


THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 99 


the superior civilizations of the Greek and Arab 
Empires, and of which the Scandinavians were the 
intermediaries}In this respect their role, despite the 
differences of climate, society and culture, seems 
quite analogous to that which Venice played in the 
South of Europe! Like her, they renewed the con-. 
tact between the East and the Westy And just as 
the commercial activity of Venice did not long’ 
delay in involving Lombardy in the movement, so 
likewise Scandinavian shipping brought about the 
economic awakening of the coast of Flanders. 
__ \The geographical situation of Flanders, indeed, 
_ put her in a splendid position to become the west- 
ern focus for the commerce of the seas of the north. 
It formed the natural terminus of the voyage for 
ships arriving from Northern England or which, 
having crossed the Sound after coming out of the 
Baltic, were on their way to the south. As has 
already been stated, the ports of Quentovic and 
Duurstede had been frequented by the Norsemen 
before the period of the invasions. First one and 
then the other disappeared before the storm. Quen- _ 
tovic did not rise again from her ruins and it was 
Bruges, whose situation at the head of the Gulf of 
Zwin was the better one, that became her heritor. 
As for Duurstede, Scandinavian mariners reap- 
peared there at the beginning of the tenth century. 














gna RET? 7 sa 


100 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


Yet her prosperity did not last very long. As com- 
merce flourished it was concentrated more and 
more about Bruges, nearer to France and kept in a 
more stable condition of peace by the Counts of 
Flanders, whereas the neighborhood of Duurstede 
was too exposed to the incursions of the still half- 
barbaric Friesians to enjoy security. Be that as 
it may, it is certain that Bruges attracted to her 
port, more and more, the trade of the North, and 
that the disappearance of Duurstede, in the course 
of the eleventh century, definitely assured her fu- 
ture. The fact that coins of the Counts of Flanders, 
Arnold II and Baldwin IV (956-1035), have been 
discovered in considerable numbers in Denmark, 
in Prussia, and even in Russia, would attest, in the 
lack of written information, to the relations with 
those countries which Flanders kept up after this 
date with the help of Scandinavian mariners.” 

_ Communication with the nearby English coast 
was to become still more active. It was at Bruges, 
for example, that the Anglo-Saxon queen Emma, 
expelled from England, settled about 1030. In 
991-1002 the list of market tolls at London makes 
mention of the F'lemings as if they were the most 


17 Engel and Serrure, Manuel de numismatique du Moyen-dge, 
Vol. It pesos: 


THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 101 


| important group of foreigners carrying on busi- 
ness in that city.** \ 

Among the causes of the commercial importance 
which so early characterised Flanders, should be 
| pointed out thé existence in that country of an in- 
_digenous industry able to supply the vessels that 
landed there with a valuable return cargo.) From 
the Roman era and probably even before that, the 
_Morini and the Menapii had been making woollen 
cloths} This primitive industry was due to be per- 

fected under the influence of the technical improve- 
‘ments introduced by the Roman conquest. The 
peculiar fineness of the fleece of the sheep raised on 
the humid meadows of the coast was the final fac- 
tor needed to insure success. The tunics (saga) 
_and the cloaks (dzrrz) which it produced were ex- 
ported as far as beyond the Alps and there even 
was at Tournai, in the last days of the Empire, a 
'factory for military clothing. The Germanic in- 
_vasion did not put an end to this industry. The 
Franks who invaded Flanders in the fifth century 
‘continued to carry it on as had the older inhab- 
itants before them—there is no doubt but that the 
Friesian cloaks of which the ninth century histori- 


| 28 F. Lieberman, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Vol. I, p. 233. 





102 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


ographer speaks were made in Flanders.” They | 
seem to be the only manufactured products which | 
furnished, in the Carolingian era, the substance of : 
a regular trade. The Friesians transported them 
along the Scheldt, the Meuse and the Rhine, and | 
when Charlemagne wanted to reply with gifts to. 
the compliments of the Caliph Harun-al-Rashid, 
he found nothing better to offer him than ‘‘pal/ia | 
fresonica.” It is to be supposed that these cloths, 
as remarkable for their beautiful colors as for their 
softness, must have immediately attracted the at- 
tention of the Scandinavian navigators of the tenth. 
century. | 

Nowhere, in the North of Europe, were found 
more valuable products, and they undoubtedly had | 
a place, side by side with the furs of the North 
and the Arab and Byzantine silk fabrics, among 
the most sought-after export goods. According to 
every indication, the cloths which were made men- 
tion of in the London market about the year 1000 
were cloths from Flanders. And the new markets | 
which shipping was now offering to them could 
not have failed to give a fresh impulse to their 
manufacture. 





19 H]. Pirenne, “Draps de Frise ou draps de Flandre ?,” Viertel- 
OnE fur Social-und Wurtschaftsgeschichte, 1909, Vol. VII, 
p. 308. 


THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 103 


Thus commerce and industry, the latter carried 
on on the spot and the former originating abroad, 
joined in giving Flanders, after the tenth century, 
-an economic activity that was to continue devel- 
oping. In the eleventh century the advances made 
were already surprising. Thenceforth | Flanders 
traded with the North of France, the wines of 
_which she exchanged for her cloths. The conquest 
of England by William of Normandy bound to the 
Continent that country which heretofore had grav- 
itated in the orbit of Denmark, and multiplied the 
relations which Bruges had already been maintain- 
ing with London, By the side of Bruges, other mer- 
-eantile centers appeared: Ghent, Ypres, Lille, 
‘Douai, Arras, Tournai. Fairs were instituted by 
‘the Counts of Thourout at Messines, Lille and 
Ypres. 
| ) Flanders was not alone in experiencing the salu- 
‘tary effects of the shipping of the North. The re- 
percussion made itself felt along the rivers which 
end in the Netherlands. Cambrai and Valen- 
‘ciennes on the Scheldt, Liege, Huy and Dinant on 
the Meuse had already, in the tenth century, been 
mentioned as centers of trade. de. \ This was true also 
of Cologne and Mainz, on the Rhine. The shores 
of the Channel and of the Atlantic, further re- 
moved from the seat of activity of the North Sea, 









} 


> 





104 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


do not seem to have had the same importance. 
Hardly any mention was made of them, with the 
exception of Rouen, naturally in close contact with 
England, and, further south, Bordeaux and Ba- 
yonne whose development was much slower. As for 
the interior of France and Germany, they were af- 
fected only very slightly by the economic move- 
ment which little by little spread in that direction, 
either coming up from Italy or coming down from 
othe Netherlands. 

“| It was only in the twelfth century that, gradual- 
. ly but definitely, Western Europe was transformed. 
‘The economic development freed her from the tra- 
ditional immobility to which a social organization, 
depending solely on the relations of man to the 
soil, had condemned her. Commerce and industry 
did not merely find a place alongside of agricul- 
ture; they reacted upon it. Its products no longer 
served solely for the consumption of the landed 
proprietors and the tillers of the soil; they were 
brought into general circulation, as objects of bar- 
ter or as raw material. The rigid confines of the 


demesnial system, which had up to now hemmed 


in all economic activity, were broken down and 
the whole social order was patterned along more 
flexible, more active and more varied lines. As in 
antiquity, the country oriented itself afresh on the 











THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 105 


city. Under the influence of trade the old Roman 
cities took on new life and were repopulated, or 
mercantile groups formed round about the military 
burgs and established themselves along the sea 
coasts, on river banks, at confluences, at the junc- 
tion points of the natural routes of communica- 
tion. Each of them constituted a market which 
exercised an attraction, proportionate to its im- 
portance, on the surrounding country or made it- 
self felt afar. 

Large or small, they were-to be-met everywhere ; 


__one was to be found, on the average, in every five 


square leagues of land. They had, in fact, become 
indispensable to society. They had introduced into 
it a division of labor which it could no longer do 
without. Between them and the country was estab- 
lished a reciprocal exchange of services. An in- 
creasingly intimate solidarity bound them to- 
gether, the country attending to the provisioning 
of the towns, and the towns supplying, in return, 
articles of commerce and manufactured goods. The 
physical life of the burgher depended upon the 
peasant, but the social life of the peasant depend- 
ed upon the burgher. For the burgher revealed to 
him a more comfortable sort of existence, a more 
refined sort, and one which, in arousing his desires, 
multiplied his needs and raised his standard of liv- 


~ 
“esas: ne a » 


106 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


ing. And it was not only in this respect that the 
rise of cities strongly stimulated social progress. 
It made no less a contribution in spreading through- 
out the world a new conception of labor. Before 
this it had been serf; now it became free, and the 
consequences of this fact, to which we shall return, 


were incalculable.| Let it be added, finally, that 


the economic revival of which the twelfth century 
saw the flowering revealed the power of capital, 


, and enough will have been said to show that pos- 


sibly no period in all history had a more profound 


effect upon humanity, 


\ Invigorated, transformed and launched upon 
the route of progress, the new Europe resembled, 
in_short, more the ancient Europe than the Europe 
of Carolingian times. For it was out of antiquity 
that she regained that essential characteristic of be- 
ing a region of cities.|And if, in the political or- 
ganization, the role of cities had been greater in 
antiquity than it was in the Middle Ages, in return 
their economic influence in the latter era greatly 
exceeded what it had ever been before. (Generally 
speaking, great mercantile cities were telatively 
rare in the western provinces of the Roman Empire. 
Aside from Rome herself, there were scarcely any 
at all except Naples, Milan, Marseilles and Lyons. 
Nothing of the sort was then in existence which 





anid 





THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE 107 


might be comparable to what were, at the begin- 
ning of the tenth century, ports like Venice, Pisa, 
Genoa or Bruges, or centers of industry such as 
Milan, Florence, Ypres, and Ghent. In Gaul, in 
fact, the important place held in the twelfth cen- 
tury by ancient cities such as Orleans, Bordeaux, 
Cologne, Nantes, Rouen, and others, was much su- 
perior to what they had enjoyed under the Em- 
perors. Finally, the extension of the economic de- 
velopment of medieval Europe went well beyond 
the limits it had reached in Roman Europe. In- 
stead of halting along the Rhine and the Danube, 
it overflowed widely in Germany and reached as 
far as the Vistula. Regions which had been trav- 
elled over, at the beginning of the Christian era, 
only by infrequent traders in amber and furs and 
which seemed as inhospitable as the heart of Africa 
might have seemed to our ancestors, now burgeoned 
with cities. The Sound, which no Roman trading 
vessel had ever crossed, was animated by the con- 


“tinual passage of ships. They sailed the Baltic and 


the North Sea as they had sailed the Mediter- 
ranean. There were almost as many ports on the 
shores of the one as on the shores of the other. 
From two quarters, trade made use of the re- 
sources which Nature had placed at its disposal. It 
dominated the two inland seas which between them 


— 


Oem ey 


ee 


SOR ARH Wares <eraeyy 


— 


aaa 


108 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


bounded the admirably indented coast line of the 
continent of Europe. Just as the Italian cities had 
driven back the Moslems from the Mediterranean, 
so in the course of the twelfth century the German 
cities drove back the Scandinavians from the North 
Sea and the Baltic, on which hereafter were spread 
the sails of the Hanse Towns. 

~~Thus the commercial expansion which first made 
its appearance at the two points at which Europe 
came in contact with it—by Venice with the world 
of the East, by Flanders with the Russo-Scandina- 
vian world—spread like a beneficent epidemic over 
the whole Continent. In reaching inland, the move- 


“ment from the North and the movement from the 


South finally met each other. The contact between 
them was effected at the mid-point of the natural 
route which led from Bruges to Venice—on the 
plain of Champagne, where in the twelfth century 
were instituted the famous fairs of Troyes, Lagny, 
Provins and Bar-sur-Aube, which up to the end 
of the thirteenth century fulfilled, in medieval 


| Europe, the functions of an exchange and of a 


clearing house. 











Chapter V 
The Merchant Class 


. LMOST always, in questions of origin, the 
amount of information available is far from 
satisfactory. It is therefore impossible to recon- 
_ struct an exact picture of the rise of the merchant 
class which inspired the commercial movement and 
caused it to spread over all Europe. 
_ Incertain countries, trade appears as an original 
and spontaneous phenomenon. This was the case, 
for example, at the dawn of history in Greece and 
_ Scandinavia. There, navigation was at least as old 
as agriculture. Everything led men to engage in it: | 
_ the deep conformation of the coast-lines, the abun- 
dance of harbors, and the subtle attraction of those 
islands and low-lying shores which were visible on 
the horizon and which made a sea-faring life seem 
the more tempting because there was so little to be 
hoped for from a soil as sterile as was that of the 
homeland. The proximity of older and poorly de- 
fended civilizations held out, in addition, the lure 
of rich plunder. Piracy was the initiator of mari- 
_time trade among the Greeks of the Homeric era, 
as among the Norse Vikings; for a long time the 
_ two vocations developed in concert. 











t 
ie 


110 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


Nothing of the sort, however, was to be found in 
the Middle Ages. There was no sign of that heroic 
and barbarian occupation. The Germanic tribes that 
invaded the Roman provinces in the fifth century 
were complete strangers to a maritime life. They | 
contented themselves with appropriating the soil, : 
and the shipping of the Mediterranean continued, 
as in the past, to fill the peaceful réle which had | 
falyen to it under the Empire. 

ia he Moslem invasion which caused its ruin and. 
closed the sea provoked no reaction. The situation : 
was taken for granted, and the continent of 

Europe, deprived of its traditional markets, re- 

mained an essentially rural civilization. The spor- 

adic trade which Jews, pedlers and occasional mer- 

chants still carried on during the Carolingian era 

was too feeble and was too effectively discouraged | 

by the invasions of the Norsemen and Saracens to 

lend support to the belief that it was the precursor 

of the commercial revival whose first symptoms 

were visible in the tenth century. 

It would seem natural to suppose, at first glance, 
that a merchant class grew up little by little in the 
midst of the agricultural masses. Nothing, how- 
ever, gives credence to that theory. In the social 
organization of the late Middle Ages, where each 
family was attached to the soil from father £0 son, 


THE MERCHANT CLASS 111 


it is hard to see what possibly could have induced 
men to exchange, for a livelihood made sure by the 
possession of the soil, the aleatory and precarious 
livelihood of the trader} 'The love of gain and the 
desire to ameliorate one’s condition must have car- 
ried, at best, very little weight with a population 
accustomed to a traditional way of living, having 
/no contact with the outside world, in which no 
novelty, no curiosity stirred the imagination, and 
in which the spirit of initiative was probably com- 
‘pletely lacking} Though they frequented the small 
local markets the peasants never made enough 
‘money out of them to be inspired with the desire 
for, or even to be inclined to envisage the possibili- 
ty of, a manner of life based on trade. ‘Theirs must 
have seemed to them merely a normal and custom- 
_ary occupation. The idea of selling one’s land in 
order to procure liquid assets certainly did not oc- 
cur to any of them. The state of society and the 
general outlook on life was entirely opposed to it. 
There is not the slightest proof that anybody had 
ever dreamed of a transaction so bizarre and so 
hazardous. 

Certain historians have sought to set up as the 
forerunners of the merchants of the Middle Ages 
those servitors whom the great abbeys charged with 
procuring, from without, the indispensable com- 

+ 















112 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


modities for their subsistence and to whom they 
sometimes entrusted the selling, in the neighbor- 
ing markets, of the surplus of their own harvests 
and vintages. This hypothesis, ingenious as it is, 
does not stand up under examination. In the first 
place, the ‘‘abbey-merchants’ were too few in 
number to have an influence of any great moment. 
In the second place, they were not free agents, but 
employees exclusively in the service of their mas- 
ters. It is not apparent that any of them ever car- 
ried on business on his own account. No attempt 
has been successful, and none, certainly, ever will 
be successful, to establish a connecting link be- 
tween them and the merchant class whose origins 
e are looking for here. 
vii ‘All that can be asserted with certainty is that 
the commercial profession appeared in Venice at 
a period when nothing yet gave reason to expect 
its spread in Western Europe.\Cassiodorus, in the 
sixth century, describes the Venetians as even then a 


sailor- and merchant-folk. It is an established fact — 


that in the ninth century some very great fortunes 
were founded in the city. The treaties of com- 
merce which Venice later concluded with the Caro- 
lingian emperors or with those of Byzantium, fur- 


thermore, leave no room for doubt as to the nature 








THE MERCHANT CLASS 113 


of the life of her inhabitants. Unfortunately there 
are no existing data on the manner in which “their 
capital was accumulated and their business carried 
on. It is more than probable that salt, prepared on 
the islets of the lagoons, formed at an early date 
the substance of a lucrative export trade. The 
coastal trade along the shores of the Adena and 
especially the relations of the city with Constan- 
tinople resulted in still greater profits. The extent 
to which the technique of Venetian commerce had 
already been perfected by the tenth century is 
extraordinary.’ 

| At a period when everywhere else in Europe in- 
struction was the exclusive monopoly of the clergy, 


the ability to write was widespread in Venice.| It» 


is perfectly obvious that there was a close relation 
between this curious phenomenon and the develop- 

Ba of trade.’ 

vIt was the PiGiedit system, which, with the great- 
est probability, helped commerce to reach at an 
early date the point it had attained. To be sure, 
there are no records bearing on the matter, earlier 
than the first part of the eleventh century. But the 
custom of maritime loans seems to have already 


1R. Heynen, Zur Entstehung des Kapitalismus in Venedig, p 
81. 


a 





/ 


114 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


been so highly developed at this period that their’ 

origin must necessarily be dated much earlier. 
\The Venetian merchant was in the habit of bor- 

rowing from a capitalist the money necessary for 


financing a cargo, at a rate of interest which aver- — 


aged in general about twenty per cent. A ship was 
loaded by several merchants acting in common, 
and the perils of navigation led maritime expedi- 
tions to be made up of flotillas comprising several 
vessels manned by large and carefully armed 
crews. Everything tends to show that the profits 
were extremely high. If, in this respect, Venetian 
documents hardly give precise information, we can 
compensate for their silence by means of Genoese 
sources. In the twelfth century maritime loans, the 
equipments of ships, and business methods were 
alike in both cities.” What we know about the enor- 
mous profits realized by Genoese mariners must 
then hold equally true for their precursors of Ven- 
ice.. And we know enough about it to be able to 
state that trade and trade alone, in the one quarter 
as in the other, could have enabled those whose 


2 R. Heynen, Zur Entstehung des Kapitalismus in Venedig, p. 65. 
3 Eugene H. Byrne, “Commercial Contracts of the Genoese in 
the Syrian Trade of the Twelfth Century,” The Quarterly 
Journal of Economics, 1916, p. 128; “Genoese Trade with Syria 
in the Twelfth Century,” American Historical Review, 1920, 


p. 191. 





THE MERCHANT CLASS 115 
fortunes energy and intelligence favored to acquire 
abundant capital.* 

; | But the secret of the rapid and early fortunes of 
_ the Venetian merchants is undoubtedly to be found 
in the close relationship which bound their com- 
mercial organization to that of Byzantium, and 
through Byzantium, to the commercial organiza- 
tion of antiquity! Th reality Venice belonged to the 
West only by her geographical location; in the life 
that animated her and the spirit that inspired her, 
she was foreign to it The first colonists of the la- 
goons, fugitives from Aquileia and neighboring 
cities, brought there the economic technique and 
tools of the Roman world. The constant and in- 
creasingly active relations which, from then on, 
continued to bind the city to Byzantine Italy and 
Constantinople, protected and developed that im- 
portant commercial center. In short, between Ven- 
ice and the East, where was preserved the thou- 
sand-year-old tradition of civilization, contact was 
never lost. Venetian navigators may be considered 
as the successor of those Syrian mariners who were 
So active, up to the time of the Moslem invasion, 
in the port of Marseilles and the Tyrrhenian Sea. 
4R. Heynen, Zur Entstehung des Kapitalismus in Venedig, p. 18; 
H. Sieveking, “Die kapitalistische Entwicklung in den italien- 


ischen Stadten des Mittelalters,’ Vierteljahrschrift fir Soctal- 
und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1909, p. 64. 


116 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


They had no need of a long and painful apprentice- 
ship to fit them for a great commerce. The tradi- 
tion of it had, with them, never been lost, and that 


is enough to explain the peculiar place they occu- 


py in the economic history of Western Europe. It 
is impossible to gainsay that the commercial law 
and customs of antiquity were the cause of the 
superiority which they showed and which they held 
from the start. Thorough research will, some day, 
doubtless supply definite proof of what is here 
merely asserted/ There is no doubt, meanwhile, but 
_, that the Byzantine influence, so characteristic of 
the political constitution of Venice during the early 
centuries, had also impregnated its economic con- 
stitution¢In the rest of Europe the commercial pro- 
fession was tardily evolved from a civilization in 
which every former trace of it had long since been 
lost. In Venice it appeared at the same time as the 
city itself; there it was a survival from the Roman 
world. 
Wenice naturally exercised a profound effect 
upon the other maritime cities which, in the course 
of the eleventh century, commenced to appear: 


Pisa and Genoa first, later Marseilles and Barce- — 


lonayBut she does not seem to have contributed to _ 


the’formation of the merchant class by virtue of 


which commercial activity spread little by little — 





THE MERCHANT CLASS 117 


_ from the shores of the sea towards the interior of 
_ the Continent. Here we find ourselves in the pres- 
ence of a quite different phenomenon, one which 
there are no grounds for believing was connected 
with the economic organization of antiquity. To 
| be sure, Venetian merchants were to be met with 
at an early date in Lombardy and north of the 
Alps. But it is not apparent that they founded 
colonies anywhere. The conditions underlying com- 
merce on the land were, after all, too different 
_ from those of commerce on the sea to make it likely 
| that they had an influence of which, furthermore, 
no existing records give indication. 

t was in the course of the tenth century that 
there reappeared in continental Europe a class of 
_ professional merchants whose progress, very slow 
at first, gathered speed as the following century 
moved forward.’ The increase in population, which 
_ began to be manifest at the same era, is certainly in 
direct relation to this phenomenon. It had as a re- 
sult the detaching from the land an increasingly 
important number of individuals and committing 
them to that roving and hazardous existence which, 
in every agricultural civilization, is the lot of those 
5 H. Pirenne, “The Stages in the Social History of Capitalism,” 
American Historical Review, 1914; “Les périodes de Vhistoire 


sociale du capitalisme,” Bulletin de l’Academie Royale de Bel- 
gique, Classe des lettres, 1914, p. 258. 


118 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


who no longer find themselves with their roots in 
the soil. It multiplied the crowd of vagabonds 
drifting about all through society, living from day 
to day by alms from the monasteries, hiring them- 
selves out at harvest-time, enlisting in the armies 
in time of war and holding back from neither ra- 
pine nor pillage when occasion presented It 
among this crowd of foot-loose adventurers that — 
the first adepts of trade must, without any doubt, / 
be looked for. ff 

Their manner of life naturally drove them 
towards all those localities where the affluence of 
the inhabitants gave them the hope of gain or of 
some fortunate opening. If they assiduously took 
part in pilgrimages, they were certainly no less 
drawn by the ports, the markets, and the fairs. 
There they hired themselves out as sailors, as boat- 
men, as dockmen or porters. Energetic characters, 
tempered by the experience of a life full of the un- 
expected, must have abounded among them. Many 
knew foreign languages and were conversant with 
the customs and needs of divers lands.° Let a lucky 


6 The Liber Miraculorum Sancte Fidis, edit. A. Bouillet, p. 63, 
says with reference to a merchant: “et sicut negotiatori diversas 
orbis partes discurrenti, erant ei terra marisque nota itinera, ac 
vie publice diverticula, semite, leges moresque gentium ac 
lingue” 





| 





chance present itself 





THE MERCHANT CLASS 119 


and heaven knows that 
chances are numerous in the life of a vagabond— 
they were remarkably well equipped to profit there- 
by./And a small profit, with skill and intelligence, 
can always be turned into a big profit. This must 
have been particularly true in an era when the in- 
sufficiency of communications and the relative 
rarity of merchandise offered for sale must have 
naturally kept prices at a very high levels F'amines 
were multiplied throughout Europe, sometimes in 





one province and sometimes in another, by that in- 
adequate system of communications, and increased 
still more the opportunities, for those who knew 
how to make use of them, of getting rich.” A few 
sacks of wheat, seasonably transported to the right 


spot, sufficed for the realizing of huge profits: For \ / 


a man, adroit and sparing no pains, Fortune then | 
held out the prospect of fruitful operations: Tt was 
certainly not long before nouveaux riches made 
their appearance in the midst of this miserable 
crowd of impoverished, bare-foot wanderers in the 
worldyy 

Fortunately there happen to be sources of in- 
formation which supply proof that this was in fact 


the casey. It will suffice to cite here the most charac- 


7¥F. Kurschmann, Hungersnote im Mittelalter, Leipzig, 1909. 


120 MEDIEVAL CITIES 
teristic of them, the Biography of St. Godric of 


es 

Me was born towards the end of the eleventh 
century in Lincolnshire, of poor peasant stock, and 
he must have been put to it from early childhood to 
find a means of living. Like many other unfortun- 
ates in every age, he was a beachcomber, on the 
lookout for wreckage cast up by the waves. Next, 
perhaps following some lucky find, he played the 
role of peddler and went about the country with a 
pack on his back. Eventually he picked up a little 
change and, one fine day, he joined a band of mer- 
chants met in the course of his peregrinations. 
With them he went from market to market, from 
fair to fair, from town to town. Thus become a 
merchant by profession, he rapidly realized profits 
big enough to enable him to form an association 
with his fellows, to load a ship in common with 
them and to engage in coastal trade along the 


shores of England, Scotland, Denmark and Flan-/ 
ders. The company prospered to the fullest. a | 


operations consisted in shipping abroad good 
which were known to be scarce, and there picking 


. ° . . . . . . ‘ : 
8 Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici, heremitae de Finchale, — 
auctore Reginaldo monacho Dunelmensi, edit. Stevenson, Lon- 


don, 1847. The importance of this text for economic history has 
been very well demonstrated by W. Vogel, “Ein seefahrender 
Kaufman um 1100,” Hansische Geschichtsblatter, 1912, p. 239. 


ake 


> 
a tg al 


) THE MERCHANT CLASS 121 


up in return merchandise which it took care to dis- 

_ pose of in places where the demand was the great- Bile. 
est and where might be realized, in consequence, ‘ 

the largest profits. At the end of several years this el 

prudent custom of buying cheap and selling dear 

made of Godric a very rich man. It was then that, 

moved by grace, he suddenly renounced the life he 

had led until then, turned over his possessions to 

the poor, and became a hermit.~ 
The story of St. Godric, if we eliminate from it 

_ the mystic ending, was that of a great many others. 

| It shows, with the utmost clearness, how a man, 

_ starting with nothing, was able in a relatively short 

_ time to amass considerable capital. Circumstances 

_ and luck probably contributed largely to the mak- 

ing of his fortune.JBut the essential cause of his 

success, and the contemporary biography to which 

_ we owe the account lays abundant stress thereon, 

_ was intelligence, or rather business sense.’ Godric 

“seems to have been a shrewd calculator gifted with 





9“Sic itaque puerilibus annis simpliciter domi transactis, caepit 
adolescentior prudentiores vitae vias excolere et documenta secu- 
laris providentiae sollicite et exercitate perdicere. Unde non 
agriculturae delegit exercitia colere, sed potius quae sagacioris 
animi sunt rudimenta studuit, arripiendo exercere. Hinc est quod 
mercatoris aemulatus studium, coepit mercimoniu frequentare 
negotium, et primitus in minoribus quidem et rebus preti in- 
ferioris, coepit lucrandi officia discere; postmodum vero paula- 
tim ad majoris preti emolumenta adolescentiae suae ingenia pro- 
movere.” Libellus de Vita S. Godrici, p. 25. 


122 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


that commercial instinct which it is not altogether 
rare to meet, in every age, among enterprising na- 
tures T he quest of profit guided all his actions and 
in him can be easily recognized that famous “capi- 
talistic spirit” (spéritus capitalisticus) which some 
would have us believe dates only from the Renais- 
sance. It is preposterous to submit that Godric 
carried on his business only to provide for his daily 
needs. In place of hoarding in the bottom of some 
chest the money he gained, he used it only to main- 
tain and extend his trading. It is not employing too 
modern an expression to say that the profits he 
realized were put to work as fast as possible to aug- 


ment his revolving capital/For that matter, it is” 


somewhat surprising to observe that the conscience 
of this future monk was completely free of all re- 
ligious scruple. His zeal in searching out for every 
commodity the market where it would produce the 
maximum profit was in flagrant opposition to the 
disapproval with which the Church looked upon 
every kind of speculation, and to the economic 
doctrine of “fair price.’’”° 

The fortune of Godric is not to be explained 


10“Quz comparat rem ut illam ipsam integram et immutatam 
dando lucretur, ille est mercator qui de templo Dei ejicitur.” 
Decretum I, dist. 88, c. 11. For the viewpoint of the Church in 
matters of trade, see F. Schaube, Der Kampf gegen den Zins- 
wucher, ungerechten Preis und unlauteren Handel im Mittel- 
alter, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1905. 





THE MERCHANT CLASS 123 


merely by business ability./In a society still as . 
crude as that of the eleventh century, private ini- 
tiative could succeed only by having recourse to 
association. Too many perils threatened the wan- 
dering existence of the merchant not to impose on 
him first of all the fundamental necessity of form- 
ing in groups for the sake of common defence. Still 
other motives impelled him to unite with his fel- 
lows. At fairs and markets, should a dispute arise, 
he found in them favorable witnesses, or bondsmen 
who would be security for him in a court of justice. 
In common with them he was able to buy at whole- 
sale merchandise which, left to his own resources, 
he would have been unable to get. His credit was 
increased by the collective credit of which he sup- 
plied a part, and thanks thereto he was able more 
easily to come out on top in competition with his 
rivals. The biography of Godric informs us in its 
own very words that from the day when its hero 
associated himself with a band of merchants his 
fortunes took their upward turn. In taking this step | 
he merely conformed to custom. Trade in the late 
Middle Ages was known only in that primitive 
form of which, the caravan is the characteristic 
manifestation. Maritime or land trade was possible 
only by grace of the mutual assurance an associa- 
tion inspired in its members, of the discipline which 


a 


124 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


it imposed upon them, of the regulations to which 
it subjected them. And this feature was always 
in evidence. Boats sailed only when assembled in 
flotillas, just as merchants travelled the country 


only in bands. Security existed for them only if . 


cuaranteed by force, and force was the consequence 
offcollectivity. // 
J It would béa complete mistake to see in the 


merchant associations, of which traces may be_ 


found in the tenth century, a peculiarly German 
phenomenon. It is true that the terms which were 
used to designate them in the north of Europe— 
gild and hanse—came originally from Germany. 
But this habit of cooperating is to be found every- 
where in economic life and, whatever may have 
been the differences in the details, in what was 
essential it was everywhere the same, because 
everywhere there were the same conditions which 
made it indispensable: /In Italy as in the Nether- 
lands, trade was able to expand only by coopera- 
tion. The fraitries, the charttés, the merchant com- 
pagnies of the countries of the Roman tongue were 
exactly analogous to the gé/ds and hanses of the 
German territories.” What determined the eco- 





11’'We even find a similar organization in Dalmatia. See C. 
Jirecek, “Die Bedeutung von Raguza in der Handelsgeschichte 


des Mittelalters,’ Almanak der Akademie der Wissenschaften, 


in Wien, 1899, p. 382. 


1 a ee EP 








THE MERCHANT CLASS 125 


“nomic organization was not “national genius,” but 


social necessity. The primitive institutions of trade 


were as cosmopolitan as those of the feudal system. . 


{) 


The sources of information make it possible to ° 


obtain an excellent idea of the merchant troops 
which, beginning with the tenth century, were to be 
found in greater and greater numbers in Western 
Europe.” They should be pictured as armed bands, 
the members of which, equipped with bows and 
swords, encircled the horses and wagons loaded 
with bags, packs and casks. At the head of the 
caravan marched a standard-bearer. A chief, the 
Hansgraf or the Doyen, exercised his authority 
over the company. This latter was composed of 
“brothers,” bound together by an oath of fidelity. 
A spirit of close solidarity animated the whole 
group. The merchandise, apparently, was bought 
and sold in common and the profits divided pro 
rata, according to the share of each one in the 
association.// 

It seems that these companies, as a general rule, 
made very long journeys. It would be a decided 
mistake to conceive of the commerce of this era as 
a local commerce, strictly confined within the orbit 
of a regional market. It has already been seen that 


12 W. Stein, “Hansa,” Hansische Geschichtsblatter, 1909, p. 53; 
H. Pirenne, ‘La hanse flamande de Londres,” Bulletin de 
Academie Royale de Belgique, Classe des lettres, 1899, p. 80. 


i, 


126 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


Italian traders went as far as Paris and Flanders. 
At the end of the tenth century the port of London 
was regularly frequented by merchants from Co- 
logne, Huy, Dinant, Flanders and Rouen. A con- 
temporary text speaks of men from Verdun trading 
with Spain.” In the valley of the Seine, the Pari- 
sian hanse of river merchants was in constant rela- 
tions with Rouen. The biography of Godric, in 
chronicling his distant expeditions in the Baltic 
and the North Sea, at the same time throws light 
on those of his fellows. | 
‘/It was therefore trade on a big scale or, if you 
| prefer a more precise term, trade over long dis- 
tances, that was characteristic of the economic re- 
vival of the Middle Ages/ Just as the shipping of 
Venice and Amalfi and later that of Pisa and Genoa 
launched forth from the very beginning on long 
sea voyages, so did the merchants of the Continent 
lead their vagabond life over wide territories.“ 
It is quite clear that this was for them the sole 
means of realizing big profits, To get high prices it 
was necessary to seek afar the products which were 


13 H. Pigeonneau, Histoire du commerce de la France, Vol. I, p. 
104. 

14 See the text cited in Note 6 and add this passage from Galbert 
de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, edit. H. 
Pirenne, p. 152, stating the grievances of the burghers against 
Count William of Normandy: “Nos in terra hac clausit ne nego=- 
clart possemus, imo quicquid hactenus possedimus, sine lucro sine 
negotiatione, sine acquisitione rerum consumpsimus.” 





THE MERCHANT CLASS V27 


there found in abundance, in order to be able to re- 

~ sell them later at a profit in places where their 

_ rarity increased their value. The more distant the 
journey of the merchant, the more profitable was 
it for hint And it is easily appreciated how the de- 

sire for gain was strong enough to counterbalance 
the hardships, the risks and the dangers of a wan- 

_ dering existence open to every aa ae dur- 
ing the winter, the merchant of the Middle Ages 
was continually on the road. English texts of the 
twelfth century picturesquely designated him un- 

_ der the name of piepowdrous—“dusty-foot.’”! 

This rover, this vagabond of trade, by Ane 
strangeness of his manner of life must have, from 
the very first, astonished the agricultural society 
all of the customs of which he went counter to and 
in which no place was set aside for hint. He brought \ 
mobility to the midst of people attached to the \ 
soil; he revealed, to a world faithful to tradition 
and respectful of a hierarchy which fixed the rdle_ | 

_ and the rank of each class, a shrewd and rationalist | 

activity in which fortune, instead of being meas- | 

_ ured by social status, depended only on intelligence | 


£ 


/ 


Fg 
_ 15 Charles Gross, “The Court of Piepowder,” The Quarterly’ 
_ Journal of Economics, 1906, p. 231. Here we have to do with the 
_ “extraneus mercator vel aliquis transiens per regnum, non 
habens certam mansionem infra vicecomitatum sed vagans, qui 
vocatur piepowdrous.” 





Ve, 


128 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


and energy. And so it is not surprising that he gave 


offense,//The nobility never had anything but dis- 


Sac 


dain for these upstarts come from no one knew 
where, and whose insolent good fortune they could 
not bear. They were enraged to see them better sup- 
plied with money than themselves; they were hu- 
miliated by being obliged to have recourse, in time 
of trouble, to the purse of these newly rich/ Save 
in Italy, where aristocratic families did not hesi- 
tate to augment their fortunes by having an inter- 
est In commercial operations in the capacity of 
money-lender, the prejudice that it was degrading 
to engage in business remained deep-rooted in the 
heart of the feudal caste up to the time of the 
l'rench Revolution. 

jAs to the clergy, their attitude in regard to mer- 
chants was still more unfavorable; ‘In the eyes of 
the Church, commercial life was dangers to the 
safety of the soul./*The merchant,” says a text at- 
tributed to St. Jerome “can please God only with 
difficulty.” Trade seemed to the canonists to be 
form of usury. ‘They condemned profit-seeking, 
which they confounded with avarice. Their doc- 
trine of “fair price” was meant to impose a re- 
nouncement of economic life and, in short, an 
asceticism incompatible with the natural develop-— 
ment of the latter. Every form of speculation 


THE MERCHANT CLASS 129 


_ seemed to them a sin. And this severity was not en- 
_ tirely caused by the strict interpretation of Chris- 
_ tian morality. Very likely, it should also be attrib- 
uted to the conditions under which the Church > 
_ existed. The subsistence of the Church, in fact, de- 


— + oo - 


pended exclusively on that demesnial organization 
which, as has been seen above, was so foreign to the 
idea of enterprise and profit. If to this be added 
the ideal of poverty which Clunisian mysticism 


| gave to religious fervor, it can be readily under- 


stood why the Church took a defiant and hostile 
attitude toward the commercial revival which 
must, from the very first, have seemed to it a thing 


_ for shame and a cause of anxiety.” 


/MWVe must admit, however, that this attitude was 


not without its benefits. It certainly resulted in 








preventing the passion for gain from spreading 
without limit; it protected, in a certain measure, 
the poor from the rich, debtors from creditors. ‘The 


scourge of debts, which in Greek and Roman an- 
_tiquity so sorely afflicted the people, was spared 
the social order of the Middle Ages, and it may 
_ well be that the Church contributed largely to that 
happy result. ‘The universal prestige it enjoyed 


936 “The Life of Saint Guidon of Anderlecht,” Acta Sanctorum, 


Vol. IV, p. 42, speaks of the “tgnobilis mercatura” and calls a 


merchant who advised the saint to apply himself to it a “dzaboli 
minister.” 


130 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


served as a moral check-rein. If it was not strong 
enough to subject the traders to the doctrine of 
™ “fair price,” it was strong enough to restrain them 
from giving way entirely to greediness for profits. 
They were certainly very uneasy over the peril to 
which their way of living exposed their eternal 
salvation. The fear of the future life tormented 
their conscience. Many there were who, on their 
death beds, founded by their wills charitable insti- 
tutions or appropriated a part of their wealth to re- 
imburse sums unjustly acquired. The edifying end 
of Godric testifies to the inner conflict which must 
often have been waged in their souls, torn between 
the irresistible seductions of wealth and the austere 
prescriptions of religious morality which their pro- 
fession obliged them, in spite of their veneration, 
to violate unceasingly.” 

The legal status of the merchants eventually 
gave them a thoroughly singular place in that so- 
ciety which they astonished in so many respects. 
By virtue of the wandering existence they led, they 
were everywhere regarded as foreigners. No one 
knew the origins of these eternal travellers. Cer- 
tainly the majority among them were born of non- 


17 An example of the conversion of a merchant quite analogous 
to that of Godric and at the same epoch is given by the “Vita 
Theogeri,” Monumenta Germaniae historica, Vol. XII, p. 457. 


THE MERCHANT CLASS 131 


free parents, from whom they had early taken 
leave in order to launch upon adventures. But serf- 
dom was not to be presumed: it had to be proven. 


chants, most of whom were without doubt the sons | 


The law necessarily treated as a free man one who 
could not be ascribed to a master At. therefore 
came about that it was necessary to treat the mer- 


of serfs, as if they had always enjoyed freedom. 


An detaching themselves from their natal soil they 


had freed themselves in fact./In the midst of a so- 
cial organization where the populace was attached 


_to the land and where everyone was dependent 
upon a liege lord, they presented the strange pic- 
ture of circulating everywhere without being 
claimed by anyone. They did not demand freedom; 
_ it was conceded to them because no one could prove 
_that they did not already enjoy it. They acquired 
| It, so to speak, by usage and limitation. In short, 
just as agrarian civilization had made of the peas- 





ant a man whose normal state was servitude, trade 


_ made of the merchant a man whose normal condi- 
_ tion was liberty. From that time on, in place of be- 
ing subject to seignorial and demesnial jurisdic- 
tion, he was answerable only to public jurisdiction. 
Alone competent to try him were the tribunals 
which still kept, above the multitude of private 


132 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


courts, the old framework of the judicial constitu- 
tion of the Frankish State.” 

Public authority at the same time took him un- 
der its protection. The local princes whose task it 
was to preserve, in their counties, peace and public 
order—to which pertained the policing of the high- 
ways and the safeguarding of travellers—extended 
their tutelage over the merchants./1n doing so they 
did nothing more than to continue the tradition of 
the State, the powers of which they had usurped, 
In that agricultural empire of his, Charleémdea 
himself had given careful attention to the main- 
tenance of the freedom of circulation. He had is- 
sued edicts in favor of pilgrims and traders, Jew 
or Christian, and the capitularies of his successors 
attest to the fact that they remained faithful to 
that policy. The emperors of the House of Saxony 
followed suit in Germany, and the kings of France, 
after they came into power, did likewise. The 
princes had, furthermore, every interest in attract-_ 
ing numerous merchants to their countries, whither 
they brought a new animation and where they aug- 
mented bountifully the revenues from the market 
tolls. The counts early took active measures against 
highwaymen, watching over the good conduct of 4 


18 H. Pirenne, “L’origine des constitutions urbaines au Moyendl 
age,” Revue Historique, 1895, Vol. LVII, p. 18. 








THE MERCHANT CLASS 133 


the fairs and the security of the routes of com- 
-munication. In the eleventh century great progress 
“had been made and the chroniclers state that there 
were regions where one could travel with a sack 
full of gold without running the risk of being 
despoiled. On its part, the Church punished high- 
-waymen with excommunication, and the Truces of 
God, in which it took the initiative in the tenth 
century, protected the merchants in particular. 

But it was not enough that merchants be placed 
under the safeguard and the jurisdiction of the 
public authority. The novelty of their profession 
had further consequences, It forced a law made for 
a civilization based on agriculture to become more 


flexible and to lend itself to the fundamental needs. 


which were imposed upon it. Judicial procedure, 
with its rigid and traditional formalism, with its 
delays, with its methods of proof as primitive as 
the duel, with its abuse of the absolutory oath, 
with its “ordeals” which left to chance the out- 
come of a trial, was for the merchants a perpetual 
nuisance. They needed a simpler legal system, 
more expeditious and more equitable. At the fairs 
and markets they elaborated among themselves a 
commercial code (juzs mercatorum) of which the 
oldest traces may be noted by the beginning of the 
eleventh century.” Most probably it was intro- 


a 


134. MEDIEVAL CITIES 


duced very early into the legal practice, at least for 


suits between merchants. It must have constituted 
for them a sort of personal law, the benefits of 
which the judges had no motive for refusing 
them.*” The contemporary texts which make allu- 
sion to it unfortunately do not make clear its terms. 
There is, however, no doubt but that it was a col- 
lection of usages born of business experience and 
which spread from place to place commensurately 
with the spread of trade itself., The great fairs 
whither came, periodically, merchants from divers 
countries and which had a special tribunal charged 
with the rendering of speedy justice, must have 
seen from the very first the elaboration of a sort of 
commercial jurisprudence, the same everywhere 
despite the differences in country, language, and 
national laws. | 

f] The merchant thus seems to have been not only 
a free man but a privileged man to boot. Like the 
cleric and the noble, he enjoyed a law of exception. 
Like them, he escaped the demesnial and seignorial 


authority which continued to bear down upon the 


peasants. /} 
} 


19 Tbid., p. 30; Goldschmidt, Universalgeschichte des Handels= 
rechts, p. 125. 
20 Alpert, “De diversitate temporum,” Monumenta Germaniae 


historica, Vol. IV, p. 718, speaks of merchants of Tiel “judicia | 


non secundum legem sed secundum voluntatem decernentes.” 


| 


Chapter VI 
The Middle Class 
N no civilization is city life evolved independ- 


ently of commerce and industry. Neither an- 
tiquity nor modern times show any exception to 


_ this rule. Diversity of climates, peoples or religions 
is as immaterial as diversity of eras. It is a rule 
_ which held true, in the past, in the cities of Egypt, 


Babylonia, Greece, and the Roman and Arab Em- 


_ pires, just as in our day it has held true in the cities 
of Europe, America, India, Japan, and China. 


ffl Ats universality is explained by exigence. A city 
group, in fact, can live only by importing its food- 
supply from outside. But with this importation 


must correspond, on the other hand, an exporta- 
tion of manufactured products constituting a coun- 
_terpart or countervalue. Thus is established, be- 


_ tween the city and the surrounding country, a close 





interrelation of services. Commerce and industry 


are indispensable to the’ maintenance of this re- 


ciprocal dependence ;/ without the first, to assure a 
steady traffic, without the second, to furnish goods 


_ for exchange, the city would perish.’ 


-1This is true, naturally, only for towns placed under normal 


conditions. The State has often had to maintain city populations 


'much too numerous to be able to take care of their own sub- 


136 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


This condition is obviously subject to any quan- 
tity of variations. Depending on time and place, 
sometimes commercial activity and sometimes in- 
dustrial activity is the dominant characteristic of 
a city population. In antiquity, of course, a consid- 
erable section of the city population was made up 
of landed proprietors, living either by the work- 
ing of or by the revenue from the lands which they 
owned outside. But it remains none the less true 
that commensurately with the development of 
cities, artisans and traders became more and more 
numerous, The rural economy, older than the ur- 
ban economy, continued to exist side by side with 
the latter; the one did not prevent the other from 
developing./ 

{The cities of the Middle Ages show a very dif- 
ferent picture. Commerce and industry made them 
what they were. They did not cease to grow under 
that influencej/At no era in history is there so 
marked a contrast as that which their social and 
economic organization presented to the social 
and economic organization of the country, IN ever 
before had there existed, it seems, a class of men so 


sistence. This, for example, was the case with Rome at the end 
of the Republic. But the increase of the population in Rome was - 
the result of political, not economic, causes. 


THE MIDDLE CLASS 137 


_ specifically and strictly urban as was the medieval 


bourgeoisie.” hf. 

fx hat the origin of these cities is directly related, 
4 an effect to its cause, to the commercial revival 
of which we have spoken in the preceding chapters, 
it is impossible to doubt. Nhe proof is to be found 


_in the striking correspondence which is to be noted 


_ between the expansion of trade and the rise of 
cities, Italy and the Netherlands, where commerce 
first showed itself, are precisely the countries where 
cities made their first appearance and where they 


developed most rapidly and vigorously, It is easy 


to mark how, in step with the progress of trade, 
towns multiplied. They appeared along all the nat- 
ural routes by which trade spread. They were born, 


so to speak, under its footsteps. They are found, 
at first, only along sea coasts and rivers. Then, as 
the commercial penetration spread, others were 
founded along the transverse roads which con- 
nected these first centers of activity with each other. 


The case of the Netherlands is quite typical. In 


2 There were certainly in the Middle Ages numbers of localities 


| 








—— 


| bearing the title “city” and endowed with city franchises, of 
_which the inhabitants were much more occupied with agriculture 
| than with commerce or industry.- But in this case they were the 
| product of a later era. We are alluding here to the middle class 


as it was first constituted and as it continued to exist in the 


characteristic centers of city life. 


138 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


the tenth century the earlier towns were founded 
on the shore of the sea or on the banks of the Meuse 
and the Scheldt; the intermediate region, Brabant, 
did not yet know them. We must wait until the 
twelfth century before they make their appearance 
on the route which lay between those two great 
rivers. Similar observations may be made any- 
where. A map of Europe on which was marked the 
relative importance of the commercial highways 
would coincide very closely with an abstract of the 
relative importance of the city groups. 

~The towns of the Middle Ages showed an extra- 
ordinary variety in type. Each had a distinctive 
physiognomy and particular characteristics. Every 
one of them differed from the others just as men 
differ among themselves. They can, however, be 
classified according to certain general types. And 
these types themselves resemble one another in 
their essential traits. It is therefore not a hopeless 
task to try to depict, as we shall endeavor to do 
here, the evolution of city life in the West of 
Europe. Doubtless the picture will necessarily be a 
little too schematic, not fitting exactly any one par- 
ticular case but rather being the description of 
what is common to a whole species, an abstract of 
individual characteristics. Only the general out- — 





THE MIDDLE CLASS 139 


lines will appear, as in a landscape viewed from a 
_ mountain top. 
_ The subject, however, is less complicated than 
would appear at first glance. It is futile, indeed, in 
an outline of the origin of European cities, to take 
count of the infinite complexity which they mani- 
fested. City life was developed first of all in only 
a quite restricted number of localities in Northern 
Italy, in the Netherlands, and in neighboring re- 
gions. It will be enough if we confine ourselves to 
these latter, neglecting the later developments 
which, whatever might be of interest in them, were 
actually only duplicate phenomena.* Yet in the 
following pages a privileged place will be accord- 
ed to the Netherlands. This is because that country 
supplies the histsrian with more abundant illumi- 
nation on the early days of city evolution than any 
other region of Western Europe. 

~!/The organization of commerce in the Middle 
Ages, as it has been described in the preceding chap- 
ter, obliged the peripatetic merchants or ‘“‘mer- 
chant adventurers,” on whom it relied, to settle at 


8 The most important towns for the study of the origins of city 
institutions are evidently the oldest; it is there that the middle 
class arose. It is a faulty method to seek to explain the latter by 
relying on towns of later and tardy development, such as those 
of Germany beyond the Rhine. 


140 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


fixed points: In the interval between their trips 


and especially during the bad season which made 


the sea, the rivers and the roads impassable, they 


necessarily had to gather at certain places in the 


region. It was naturally in localities of which the 
site, by its facilities in the matter of communi- 
cations, lent itself best to the exigencies of trade 
and where they could at the same time place 
their money and goods in security, that the mer- 
chants established their residence. They therefore 
repaired to the towns and burgs which best met 
these conditions. 

The number of them was considerable. The site 
of the towns had been determined by the conforma- 
tion of the terrain or the direction of the -river 
courses—in short, by conditions of nature, which 
were precisely what determined the direction of 
trade and so steered the merchants towards them. 
In the same way the burgs, which had been de- 
signed to resist enemies or furnish a shelter to the 


population, were naturally built in localities par-— 


ticularly easy of access. It was by the same routes 


the invaders passed that the merchants travelled, 


and the result was that fortresses erected against — 


inet 


_ the former were excellently situated for attract- — 
_ing the latter to their walls. Thus it came about — 
that the first commercial Stone were formed _ 


ta" 








THE MIDDLE CLASS 141 


in neighborhoods which Nature had predisposed 
to become—or to become again—the focal points 
of economic circulation.” 

here are apparent grounds for belief, and cer- 
tain historians in fact have believed, that these 
first agglomerations were due to the markets es- 
tablished in such great number beginning with the 
ninth century. Inviting as it seems at first glance, 
this opinion does not bear scrutiny. The markets of 
the Carolingian era were simple local markets, fre- 
quented by peasants from roundabout, and by a 
few pedlers. They had as their sole aim the pro- 
visioning of the towns and burgs. They were not 
held more than once a week and their operations 
were limited by the household needs of the inhab- 
itants, very few in number, for whose benefit they 
had been instituted. Markets of this sort have 
always existed and still exist in our own day in 
thousands of little towns and villages. Their at- 
traction was not strong enough nor widespread 
enough to draw and hold a mercantile population. 
We know, moreover, of any number of places 
which, although equipped with markets of this 


-sort, never rose to the rank of cities. Such, for ex- 


ample, was the case with those which the Bishop of 


4H. Pirenne, “L’origine des constitutions urbaines au Moyen- 


age,” Revue Historique, 1895, Vol. LVII, p 





. 


142 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


Cambrai and the Abbot of Reichenau established, 
the one in 1001 at Cateau-Cambrésis and the other 
in 1100 at Radolfzell. Yet Cateau and Radolfzell 
never were anything but insignificant localities 
from an economic viewpoint, and the failure of the 
attempts of which they were the object clearly 
shows that these markets were wanting in that in- 
fluence which one is sometimes minded to accord 
them.” 

As much might be said of the fairs (fora), and 
yet the fairs in contrast to the markets do not show 
a strictly local character; they were instituted to 
serve as a periodic meeting place for the profes- 
sional merchants, to put them in touch with each 
other, and to get them to gather there at fixed sea- 
sons. In fact, the importance of many of these fairs 
was very great. In Flanders those of Thourout and 
Messines and in France those of Bar-sur-Aube and 
Lagny figured among the principal centers of me- 
dieval trade up to near the end of the twelfth 
century. It may therefore seem strange that none 
of these localities became a city worthy of the 


5H. Pirenne, “Villes, marchés et marchands au Moyen- 
age,’ Revue Historique, 1898,Vol. LXVII, p. 59; F. Keutgen, 


Untersuchungen tiber den Ursprung der deutschen Stadtver- — 


fassung, Leipzig, 1895; S. Rietschel, Markt und Stadt in threm 
rechtlichen Verhaltniss, Leipzig, 1897. 





THE MIDDLE CLASS 143 


name. {This is because whatever activity they 
showed was lacking in that permanent character 
_ which is necessary for the fixation of trade} Mer- 
chants directed their steps toward them because 
they were situated on the great route of travel 
running from the North Sea to Lombardy, and 
_ because they enjoyed special franchises and privi- 
_leges there. They were points of assembly and 
places of exchange where buyers and sellers from 
_ the north and south were to be encountered. After 
a few weeks their exotic clientéle dispersed, not to 
_ return before the following year. 
_ (It probably happened—and it very often did 
happen, as a matter of fact—that a fair was lo- 
cated at the spot where already existed a mercan- 





tile group. The one may have assisted the develop- 
_ ment of the other. But it is impossible to hold that 
this was the real cause of its existence. Several 
_ great cities can be named, which never had a privi- 
leged market or which did not have one until very 
_ late. Worms, Speyer, or Mainz never was the seat 
_ of a fair; Tournai had one only in 1284, Leyden 
in 1304, and Ghent in the fifteenth century only.° 
The fact t therefore remains that geographical loca- 
_ tion joined to the presence. of a town or a fortified 


°H. Pirenne, “L’origine des constitutions urbaines au Moyen- 


age, Revue Historique, 1895, Vol. LVII, p. 66. 


| 7a P ey 





144. MEDIEVAL CITIES 


burg seems the essential and necessary condition 
for a colony of merchants. 4 
Nothing is less artificial than the development 
of a colony of this sort. The fundamental needs of 
commerce—ease of communication and security— 
account for it in the most natural way. In a more 
advanced era, when better methods would permit 
man to conquer Nature and to force his presence 
upon her despite handicaps of climate or of soil, it 
would doubtless have been possible to build towns 
anywhere the spirit of enterprise and the quest of 
gain might choge a site. But it was quite another 
matter in a period when society had not yet ac- 
quired enough vigor to rise above the physical con- 
ditions in the midst of which it developed. It nat- 
urally adapted itself to them and in accordance 
with them its life was regulated.{In short, the 
towns of the Middle Ages were a phenomenon de- 
termined as much by physical surroundings as the 
course of rivers is determined by the conformation 
of the mountains and the direction of the valle 
As the commercial revival in Europe gained 
headway after the tenth century, the merchant 
colonies established in the towns or at the foot of 
the burgs enjoyed an uninterrupted growth. Their 
population increased through the action of econom- 
ic vitality. Up to the end of the thirteenth century, 





THE MIDDLE CLASS 145 


the progress which héd been manifest from the 
_ start continued steadily. No other course was open. 
_ Each of the focal points of international traffic 

naturally shared in this activity, and the multipli- 
_cation of merchants naturally resulted in an in- 
crease of their number in all the spots where they 
had first settled, for these spots were exactly the 
_ones most favorable to commercial life. If they 

had attracted the traders sooner than others did, 
it is because they, better than the others, satisfied 
their professional requirements. Here, therefore, 
isa thoroughly satisfactory explanation of the fact 
| that, Jas a general rule, the greatest commercial 
“cities in a region were also the oldest. 

There is by no means enough information to sat- 
isfy our curiosity concerning these primitive mer- 
cantile groups. The historiography of the tenth 
and eleventh centuries is completely unconcerned 
with social and economic phenomena. Written ex- 
'clusively by clerics or by monks, it naturally meas- 
ured the importance and the value of events 
according to how they affected the Church. Lay so- 
ciety did not claim their attention save insofar as it 
related to religious society. They could not neglect 
the recital of the wars and political conflicts which 
reacted on the Church, but there was no reason for 
them to have taken pains to note the beginnings of 


1 
ul 


x 


146 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


city life, for which they were lacking in compre- 
hension no less than in sympathy.’ A few allusions 
made incidentally, a few fragmentary annotations 
upon the occasion of a disorder or an uprising— 
this is what the historian is obliged to content him- 
self with. We must go to the twelfth century to get, 


here and there from some rare layman dabbling in ~ 


writing, a little more substantial prize. Maps and 
records supplement this poverty to a certain ex- 
tent. Yet they are rare indeed for the period of 
origins. It is only by the end of the eleventh cen- 
tury that they begin to throw a little more abund- 
ant illumination. As for first-hand sources—that is 
to say, written and compiled by townsmen—there. 
are none in existence earlier than the end of the 
twelfth-century. It is therefore necessary, although 
there are a few, to ignore them and to have re- 
course, too often, to inference and hypothesis in 
this study of origins. 

Details are lacking concerning the gradual peo- 
pling of the towns. It is not known how the first 
traders, who came to locate there, settled in the 
midst of the pre-existing population. The towns, 


7 The chronicler Gilles d’Orval, for example, speaking of the 
franchises granted the town of Huy by the Bishop of Liége in 
1066, mentions a few points and passes over the rest in silence 
“in order not to bore the reader.” He is evidently thinking of 
the ecclesiastical public for which he is writing. 





| 


THE MIDDLE CLASS 147 


whose precincts frequently included empty spaces 


- occupied by fields and gardens, must have furnished 


them at the start with a place which soon became 


too restricted. It is certain that in many of them, 


from the tenth century on, they were forced to lo- 


cate outside the walls. At Verdun they built a forti- 


_ fied enclosure (negotiatorum claustrum), joined to 
the city by two bridges.* At Ratisbonne the “city of 
merchants” (urbs mercatorum) arose beside the 


episcopal city, and the same thing is to be seen at 


Strasbourg and elsewhere.’ At Cambrai the new- 


comers surrounded themselves with a palisade of 
wood which a little later was replaced by a stone 


-rampart.’° At Marseilles the circuit of the city 


must have been enlarged at the beginning of the 
eleventh century.“ It would be easy to multiply 


_ these examples. They establish beyond question the 
_ rapid extensions undergone by the old cities which 
had not hitherto witnessed any growth since the 
_ Roman era. 


The peopling of the burgs was due to the same 


8 Richer, Historiae, Book III, par. 103, “negotiatorum claustrum 


muro instar oppidi extructum, ab urbe quidem Mosa interfluente 


sejunctum, sed pontibus duobus interstratis et annexum.” 

9In the old municipal laws of Strasbourg, the new agglomera- 
tion is called “urbs exterior.” , 

10 Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium,” Monumenta Germanzae 
historica, Vol. VII, p. 499. 

11 F, Kiener, Verfassungsgeschichte der Provence, p. 212. 


148 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


causes as that of the towns, but it worked out under 
quite different conditions. Here, in fact, available 
space was not to be had by the new arrivals. The 
burgs were merely fortresses whose walls enclosed 
a strictly limited area. The result was that, at the 
start, the merchants were driven to settle outside 
this area because there was no other place for them. 
They built beside the burgs an “outside burg’— 
that is to say, a “faubourg” (forsburgus, suburbi- 
wm). This suburb was called, by contemporary 
texts, the “new burg” (novus burgus), in contrast 
to the feudal burg or “old burg” (vetus burgus) 
to which it was joined. In the Netherlands and 
in England there was a word used to designate 
it which corresponded admirably to its nature— 
portus. 

In the administrative terminology of the Roman 
Empire, not a sea port, but an enclosed place serv- 
ing as storehouse or transfer point for merchandise 
was called a Gortus)* The expression was passed 
on, with hardly “any change, to the Merovingian 
and Carolingian eras. It is obvious that all the 
places to which it was applied were situated on 
watercourses and that market-tolls were collected 
12Digeste, L, 16. 59: “Portus appellatus est conclusus locus quo 
importantur merces et inde exportantur”’; Isidorus of Seville, 


Etymologiae, Book, XIV, chap. vil, pars, 39, 40: “Portus dictus 
a deportandis commerciis.” 


| THE MIDDLE CLASS 149 


| 

in them. They were, therefore, landing places where 
was accumulated in the natural course of trading 
operations merchandise destined to be shipped fur- 


ther.”° 

L etween a porfus anda market or a fair the dis- 
tinction is very clear. While the latter were period- 
ic meeting places of buyers and sellers, the former 
‘was a permanent place of trade, a center of unin- 
terrupted traffic. After the seventh century Dinant, 
‘Huy, Valenciennes and Cambrai were places with 
a portus, and in consequence transfer points.” The 
‘economic slump of the eighth century and the 
‘Norseman invasions naturally ruined their busi- 
ness. It was not until the tenth century that the old 
porti took on new life or new ones were established, 
as at Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, St. Omer, and else- 
where:/At the same date there appears in Anglo- 
Sax6n texts the word “port,” employed as a syno- 


nym for the Latin words uwrbs and czvétas, and even 





at the present day the term “port” is commonly met 
with in the names of cities of every land of English 
speech.” - 


13In the twelfth century the word still retained its original 
meaning of landing place: “Infra burgum Brisach et Argentinen- 
sem civitatem, nullus erit portus, qui vulgo dicitur Ladstadt, 
nisi apud Brisach,” H. G. Gengler, Stadtrechtsaltertumer, p. 44. 
14]. Pirenne, “L’origine des constitutions urbaines au Moyen- 
age,” Revue Historique, Vol. LVII, p. 12. 

15 Murray, New English Dictionary, Vol. VII, 2nd part, p. 1136. 


¥ 


of 


et 
ee 


150 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


Nothing shows more clearly the close connection 
that existed between the economic revival of the 
| Middle Ages and the beginnings of city life. They 
were so intimately related that the same word 
' which designated a commercial settlement served 
_ in one of the great idioms of Europe to designate 
_ the town itself. Old Dutch supplies a similar in- 
~ stance. In it the word poort and the word poorter 
are both employed, the first with the meaning of 
“town”’ and the second with that of “towgsman.” / 
It can be definitely assumed that the portz, sO 
frequently spoken of during the tenth and eleventh 
centuries, at the foot of the burgs of Flanders and 
nearby regions, were made up of merchant groups. 
Several passages in the chronicles or lives of the 
saints which deal with the subject, though in scant 
detail, leave no room for doubt on this point. It 
will be enough to cite here the curious narrative of 
the Miracula St. Womari, written about 1060 by 
a monk who was an eye-witness of the events he re- 
ported. Here we have to do with a troop of friars 
arriving in procession at Ghent. The inhabitants go 
out to meet them, “like a swarm of bees.” They 
conduct.their pious visitors first to the Church of 
St. Pharailde, situated within the limits of the 
burg. The next day they leave the latter to repair 
to the Church of St. John the Baptist, recently 


4 ¥ 
7 Ron - 






THE MIDDLE CLASS 151 


erected in the portus.'* It therefore seems that here 
‘is a case of the juxtaposition of two residential 
‘centers of different origin and nature. The one, the 
older, is a fortress and the other, the more recent, 
is a place of trade, And it is from the gradual fusion 
of these two elements, of which the first is ab- 
sorbed little by little by the second, that the city 1 
born.” // 
It will be well to take note, before going further, 
‘of the fate of those towns and burgs whose loca- 
tion did not favor their becoming commercial cen- 
‘ters. Typical examples, without going outside the 
‘Netherlands, were Térouanne or the burgs built 
about the monasteries of Stavelot, Malmédy, 
‘ Lobbes, etc. In the agricultural and demesnial civ- 
jlization of the Middle Ages, all these places were 
notable for their wealth and their influence. But, 
situated too far from the great highways of com- 
“munication, they were not affected by the economic 
revival nor, so to speak, fecondated thereby. In the 
midst of the flowering which it inspired, they re- 
mained sterile, like seed fallen upon stony ground. 
None of them rose above the rank of mere half- 





16 “Miracula §S. Womari,” Monumenta Germaniae historica, Vol. 

XV, p. 841. 2H 

27H. Pirestie, “Tes villes flamandes avant le XII® siécle,” An- 
nales de l'Est et du Nord, Vol. I, p. 22. 


© 


152 MEDIEVAL CITIES 





rural market-towns’. And it is not to the point, 
furthermore, to show that in the evolution of the 
city, the towns and the burgs had on the whole only 
an auxiliary function. Adapted to a social order 
very different from that which witnessed the birth 
of cities, they could not have been able to give birth 
to the latter by their own force. They were, so to 
speak, the crystallization points of commercial ac- 
tivity. It did not arise from them—it came to them 
from without, when favorable conditions of site 
brought it their way. Their role was essentially a 
passive réle.fIn the history of the development of 
cities, the commercial suburb was considerably 
more important than the feudal burg. It was the 
suburb that was the active elementJand, as will be 
seen later, therein lies the explanation of that re- 
newal of municipal life which was merely the con- 
sequence of the economic revival.” 


18 We may make the same observation concerning the towns of 
Bavai and Tongres, which had been important administrative 
centers in the North of Gaul during the Roman era. Not being 


Situated on any watercourse, they did not profit by the com- — 


mercial revival. Bavai disappeared in the ninth century ; Tongres — 
has remained without any importance up to our own day. | 
19 Naturally, no claim is made that the evolution took place inl 
exactly the same way in every city. The merchant suburb is not 
everywhere so clearly distinguished from the original burg as 
it is, for instance, in Flemish cities. According to local conditions, 
the immigrant merchants and artisans formed their colonies in 
divers ways. Here merely the main outlines of the subject can 
be indicated. See on this point the observations of N. P. Ottokar, 
Opiti po istoru franzouskich gorodov, Perm, 1919, p. 244. 









: | 
: 
: THE MIDDLE CLASS 153 


, A striking characteristic of the merchant groups 
| was their uninterrupted growth, beginning with the 
tenth century. Therein they show the most violent 
contrast to the immobility in which the towns and 
the burgs, at the feet of which they were located, 
persisted. They continually drew to themselves new 
‘inhabitants. They expanded steadily, covering a 
‘larger and larger area, so much so that in many 
places they had, by the start of the twelfth century, 
already surrounded on all sides the original fort- 
_resses about which their houses pressed. After the 
_ beginning of the twelfth century, it became neces- 
sary to create new parishes for them. At Ghent, at 
Bruges, at St. Omer, and in many other places, con- 
temporary texts remark the construction of these 
churches, due often to the initiative of wealthy 
merchants.” 

Only a general idea can be formed of the ar- 
rangement and disposition of the suburb, for exact 


Ne en aa aE 


=’ 


details are lacking. The original type, however, ’ 


was universally very simple. There was, of course, 
a market, always established on the bank of the 
stream which passed by the locality. This was the 
junction point of the streets (plateae) leading 
from it towards the gates giving access to the 


20In 1042 the church of the burghers at St. Omer was built at 
the expense of a certain Lambert who was most probably him- 
self a burgher. A. Giry, Histoire de St. Omer, Paris, 1877, p. 369. 





154 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


open country. For the merchant suburb was 
surrounded by defence works, one of its most 
important features.” 

These defence works were, of course, absolutely © 
necessary in a society where, despite the efforts of 
the princes and the Church, violence and rapine 
continued to be in universal evidence. Before the 
dissolution of the Carolingian Empire and the 
Norseman invasions, the Monarchy had succeeded 
fairly well in guaranteeing public security, and 
as a result the porté of that time, or at least the 
greater number of them, remained unfortified. But 
by the second half of the ninth century there no 
longer existed any guarantee for the safety of per- 
sonal property, other than the protection of ram- 
parts. A capitulary of 845-856 clearly indicates 
that the rich men and the few merchants who still 
were left sought refuge in the towns.” The new 
prosperity of trade attracted the attention of high- 
waymen of all sorts to such an extent that mercan- 
tile centers felt a pressing need for adequate pro- 
tection against them ‘a as merchants did not 
venture on the highways unless armed, so also they — 
made of their collective residences a sort of strong- — 








21 See the map of Bruges at the beginning of the twelfth century 
in Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bom ui] 
Comte de Flandre, edit. H. Pirenne, Paris, 1891. 

22 Boretius, Capitularia regum francorum, Vol. II, p. 405. 


: 
: 


hol (The settlements which they founded at the 
foot of the towns or burgs bring to mind the close 
parallel existing in the forts and the blockhouses 
‘built by the European immigrants in the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries in the colonies of 
“America and Canada. Like the latter, they were 
“customarily defended merely by a solid palisade 
of wood pierced with gates and surrounded by a 
moat. An interesting souvenir of these first urban 
fortifications survives in the custom, long preserved 
in heraldry, of symbolising a city by a sort of 
circular hedge. 
It is certain that this rude enclosure of timber 
had no other purpose than the parrying of unex- 
pected attacks. It constituted a security against 
bandits; it would not have been able to withstand 
a regular siege.” In case of war it had to be aban- 
doned and put to the torch in order to prevent the 
enemy from turning it to his own ends, while refuge 
was sought in the stronger citadel of a town or 
_ burg. It was not until about the beginning of the 
_ twelfth century that the growing prosperity of the 
- merchant colonies enabled them to make their se- 
curity somewhat more certain by building solid 
ramparts of stone, flanked by towers, and capable 
23 See above (chap. m1, Note 14), the text cited for Cambrai. 


At Bruges, at the beginning of the twelfth century, the town 
was still defended only by wooden palisades. 


THE MIDDLE CLASS 155 


Saar aE. 





156 MEDIEVAL CITIES — 


of facing a serious attack. Thereafter they became 
fortresses in themselves. The old feudal or epis- 
copal enceinte which continued to stand in their 
center thus lost all reason for existence. Little by 
little their useless walls were allowed to fall in 
ruin. Houses leaned up against them, and they 
were broken open to make way for new streets. 
Very often it happened that the towns bought them 
back from the count or the bishop, for whom they 
no longer represented anything but idle capital, 
demolished them and transferred the ground they 
had covered into building lots. 
¥ Inthe need of security which the merchants felt 
there lies, therefore, the explanation of the funda- 
mental characteristic of the towns of the Middle 
Ages. They were strongholds. It is impossible to 
imagine a town existing at that era without walls. 
It was an attribute by which towns were distin- 
guished from villages. It was a right, or to use the 
expression of that time, it was a privilege which 
none of them lacked. Here again heraldry con- 
forms very exactly to reality, in surmounting the 
crests of cities by a walled crown. 

But the rampart was not only the symbol of the — 
city 3 it was from it also that came the name which i 
served and which still serves to designate the popu- — 
lation. Because of the very fact that it was a forti-. 


\ Y 





SS ——————eEEE——EEeE=Ew 





THE MIDDLE CLASS 157 


fied place, the town became a burg/T he mercantile 
center, as has been shown above, was designated 
by the name of “new burg”’ to distinguish it from 
the original “old burg.”’ And hence its inhabitants, 
at the beginning of the eleventh century at the 
latest, received the name of “burghers” (burgen- 
ses) //The first known mention of this word occurs 
in France in 1007. It appears again in Flanders, at 
St. Omer, in 1056; then it passes into the Empire 
by the intermediary of the region of the Moselle, 
where it crops up at Huy in 1066. It was there- 
fore the inhabitants of the “new burg,” that is to 
say of the merchant burg, who received, or more 
probably who created it to describe themselves, the 
appellation of “‘burghers.’’ It is curious to see that 
it was never applied to those of the “old burg.” 
These latter were known as castellani or castrenses. 
And this is further, and particularly significant, 
proof that the origins of city populations should 
be sought not in the older population of the early 
fortresses but in the immigrant population which 
trade brought to them and which, in the eleventh 
century, began to absorb them. /, 

The appellation of “burgher” did not imme- 


diately come into universal use. Along with it, that 


of cives (citizen) was still employed, in conformity 


with the ancient tradition. In England and Flan- 


eee, 
— 


a 


ee 


158 - MEDIEVAL CITIES 


ders there are also found the words poortmanni and 
poorters, both of which fell into disuse about the 
end of the Middle Ages but confirm in the happiest 
manner the identity, which has elsewhere been es- 
tablished, between the portus and the “new burg.” 
Strictly speaking, they were really one and the 
same thing, and the synonymity which language 
shows between the poortmannus and the burgensis 
would be enough to attest to it even if sufficient 
proof had not been already adduced. 

/-It is somewhat difficult to define this original 


middle class of the commercial centers. Evidently 
_it was not composed exclusively of those wide-tray- 
elled merchants spoken of in the preceding chapter. 


It must have comprised, besides them, a more or 
less important number of men engaged in the un- 


the necessary accessories for carrying on business 
As a result, men from the whole neighboring terri 
tory were drawn to the nascent city in search of a 
professsion. A definite and positive attraction by 
the urban population for the rural population is 
clearly manifest by the beginning of the eleventh 


_ loading and the transporting of merchandise, in the — 
_ rigging and the equipping of the boats, in the manu- 
_ facture of carts, casks, chests or, in a word, of all 


/ 


century. The greater the concentration of popula- — 


tion, the greater the effect it had roundabout. It 


~! 


: 
‘3 


t 





THE MIDDLE CLASS 159 


_ needed, for its daily existence, not only a quantity 


but also an ;ncreasing variety of skilled workmen. 


_ The few artisans who heretofore had sufficed for 


the limited needs of the towns and the burgs evi- 
dently could not satisfy the multiplied exigencies 
of the newcomers. Members of the most indispens- 
able profession therefore had to come from outside 


_ —bakers, brewers, butchers, smiths, and so on. 


| 





But trade itself stimulated industry. In every 
region where industry was carried on in the country, 
trade made a successful effort first to lure it to the 
city and then to concentrate it there. 

Flanders supplies one of the most instructive ex- 
amples in this respect. It has already been shown © 
that ever since the Celtic era the trade of cloth- 
making was widely carried on in the country. The 
peasants, thanks to the preservation of processes 
and of Roman methods, there manufactured cloth 
capable of supplying the basis of a regular and 
profitable export trade. The merchants of the 
towns did not fail to take advantage thereof. By 
the end of the tenth century they were shipping 
cloth to England.* They soon learned to know the 
excellent quality of the native wool and sought to 
introduce it into Flanders, where they could have 
it worked up under their supervision. Thus they 


24 See above, chap. Iv. 


160 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


made themselves givers of work and naturally at- 
tracted to the cities the weavers of the country.” 
These weavers thereafter lost their rural character 
and became simple employees in the service of the 
merchants. 
| The increase of the population naturally fa- 
“* vored industrial concentration. Numbers of the 
| poor poured into the towns where cloth-making, 
LY” the activity of which trade grew proportionately 
with the development of commerce, guaranteed 
them their daily bread. Their condition there, how- 
ever, seems to have been very miserable. The com- 
petition which they maintained with each other in 
the labor market allowed the merchants to pay 
them a very low wage. Existing information, of — 
which the earliest dates back to the eleventh cen- 
tury, shows them to have been a brutish lower class, 
uneducated and discontented.” The social conflicts — 
which industrial life must have fomented, and 
which were so terrible in the Flanders of the thir- 
teenth and fourteenth centuries, were already in 
embryo in the very period of city evolution. The 
25 Ghent must have already been an important weaving center 
in the eleventh century, since the “Vita Macarii,” Monumenta — 
Germaniae historica, Vol. XV, p. 616, speaks of the proprietors — 
of the neighborhood bringing their wool thither. 
26 On this point see the “Chronicon S. Andreae Castri-Camera- _ 


censil,” Monumenta Germaniae historica, Vol. VII, p. 540, and — 
the “Gesta abbatum Trudonensium,” zdid., Vol. X, p. 310. 





, PHE MIDDLE CLASS 161 


antagonism between capital and labor is thereby 


_ revealed to be as old as the middle class. 


The old rural industry very quickly disappeared. 
It could not compete with that of the town, abund- 


_antly supplied with the raw material of commerce, 


~~ eee 


operating at lower prices, and enjoying more ad- 
vanced methods. For the merchants, with an eye 
to selling, did not fail to improve the quality of 


the cloths they exported. They organized and 
_ themselves directed the workshops where they were 





- milled and dyed. In the twelfth century they had 


come to be without rivals, in the markets of Europe, 
for the fineness of their weaves and the beauty of 


their colors. They increased the dimensions also. 


The old square “cloaks” (pallia) which the weav- 
ers of the country districts had formerly made, 


_ were replaced by pieces of cloth thirty to sixty ells 


in length, more economical to make and easier to 


ship. 


The cloths of Flanders thus became one of the 


_ most sought-after general articles of merchandise. 
_ The concentration of this industry in the towns re- 


mained, until the end of the Middle Ages, the chief 
source of their prosperity and helped to make them 
virtually great manufacturing centers, of which 


-Douai, Ghent and Ypres were distinctive types. 


Although cloth-making was the dominant indus- 


1 


162 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


try in Flanders it was, naturally, far from being 


restricted to that country alone. Many of the towns’ 


of the North and the South of France, of Italy and — 


Rhenish Germany, were also successfully engaged 
in it. Cloth, more than any other manufactured 
product, was the basis of the commerce of the Mid- 
dle Ages. Metallurgy enjoyed far less importance. 
It was confined almost entirely to brass-working, 
to which certain cities, and particularly Dinant in 
Belgium, owe their fortune. But whatever might 
be the nature of industry in other respects, every- 
where it obeyed that law of concentration which 
was operative at such an early date in Flanders. 


(Everywhere the city groups, thanks to commerce, 


drew rural industry to them.” 

In the era of demesnial economy, each agricul- 
tural center, big or little, supplied in the largest 
measure possible its own wants. The great pro- 
prietor maintained in his “court” artisan-serfs, 


just as each peasant built his own house or made — 


with his own hands the furniture or the utensils he 
needed. The-ped the Jews, the infrequent 
merchants who passed through the markets at great 
intervals supplied the rest. They lived under con- 
*7In the eleventh century the “Miracula Sancti Bavonis,” 
Monumenta Germaniae historica, Vol. XV, p. 5945 mentioned 


at Ghent the “Jaict qui ex officio agnominabantur coriaru.” There 
is no doubt but that these artisans had come there from without. 


= 


“mer to industry and commerce, and this state of 


advantageous to the middle classes than to the 


THE MIDDLE CLASS 163 


ditions very similar to those which still exist in 


many regions of Russia. All of that was changed 


_ when the towns began to offer to the rural popula- 


tion industrial products of every sort. It result- 
ed in an exchange of commodities between the mid- 
dle classes and the rural population, as has been 


_ pointed out above. The artisans who supplied the 
_ town people found in the rural classes another as- 


sured clientéle. There came about a sharp-division™ 
of labor between town and country. The latter 
gave itself over to agriculture exclusively, the for- 


a 
ai E 


things was to endure as long as the social order of 
the Middle Ages. It was, incidentally, much more 


Ceres 


_ peasants 


The towns, therefore, energetically rl their, 


_ efforts to safeguard it. They never failed to oppose 
every attempt to introduce industry into the coun- 


try districts. They jealously watched over the m 
nopoly which guaranteed their existence. It was 
not until the dawn of the modern era that they 
were willing to give up an exclusivism no longer 
compatible with economic progress.” 

The middle classes whose double activity—com- 


28H. Pirenne, Belgian Democracy—Its Early History, Man- 
chester, 1915, p. 201. 





AAR RENEE REIT TR I EE 


164 MEDIEVAL CITIES 





mercial and industrial—has just been outlined, 
were faced by innumerable difficulties which they 
overcame only as time went on. No provision had 
been made for their reception in the towns and 
burgs where they settled down. There they were 
a cause of perturbation at first, and probably they 
were very often greeted as undesirables. First of 
all they had to come to terms with the proprietors 
of the soil. Sometimes it was the bishop, some- 
times a monastery, sometimes a count or a seigneur 
who owned the land and there administered jus- 
tice. Frequently it even happened that the space 
occupied by the portus or the “new burg” was 
amenable to the jurisdiction of several tribunals 
and of several demesnes. It was intended for agri- 
culture, and the immigration of the newcomers 
changed it all at once into ground for building. A 
certain time was needed before the owners per- 
ceived the profit they could make out of it. At first 


they particularly resented the inconvenience caused — 


by the appearance of these colonies given over to a_ 


sort of life which went counter to custom or which 
shocked traditional ideas. 


Conflicts immediately arose. They were inevit- | 
: : ‘ 
able, in view of the fact that the newcomers, who — 


were strangers, were hardly inclined to value the 
interests, rights and customs which inconvenienced 







THE MIDDLE CLASS 165 


them. Room had to be made for them as best as 
could be done, and as their numbers increased their 


encroachments became more and more bold. 


In 1099, at Beauvais, the chapter was obliged to 


_bring action against the dyers who had so obstruct- 
-ed the course of the river that its mills could no 
longer function.” Elsewhere, from time to time, a 


| 


bishop or a monastery disputed with the burghers 
the lands they occupied. But whether they willed 


or not, they had to come to terms. At Arras the 


abbey of St. Vaast ended by parting with its til- 


-lages and parcelling them out. Similar cases oc- 


: 
: 
: 


' 





curred at Ghent and Douai. Despite the penury of 
existing information, it must be assumed that ar- 
rangements of this sort were very common. Even 
at the present day the names of streets recall, in 
many cities, the agricultural character which was 
theirs at the beginning. At Ghent, for example, one 
of the principal arteries is still designated under 


the name of “Field Street”’ (Veldstraat) and near 
‘it is to be found “Husbandry Square” (place du 


Kouter).*° 
To the multiplicity of proprietors corresponded 


29H. L. Labande, Histoire de Beauvais, Paris, 1892, p. 55. 


80 For the status of real estate in the towns, see G. Des Marez, 
Etude sur la propriété fonciére dans les villes du Moyen-age 
et spécialement en Flandre, Ghent, 1898. The oldest known 
reference to the enfranchisement of city land dates back to the 
beginning of the eleventh century. 


166 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


the multiplicity of forms of government to which 
the lands were subject. Some were subject to land- 
taxes and statute-labor, others to prestations des- 
tined for the maintenance of the knights who 
formed the permanent garrison of the “old burg;” 
still others to dues collected by the castellan or by 
the bishop or by the solicitor with the title of Chief 

\ Justiciary. All, in short, bore the stamp of an era 
in which economic organization, like political or- 
ganization, had been based entirely on possession 
of the soil. To that were added the formalities and 
the taxes customarily levied at the time of the 
transfer of real estate, and which singularly com- 
plicated, if they did not actually make impossible, 
purchase and sale. 

Under such conditions the land, burdened by the’ 
accumulated vested interests which weighed heavy- 
ily upon it, could not play any part in business 
operations, acquire a market value, or serve as a 
basis of credit. , 

The multiplicity of jurisdictions complicated — 
still more a situation already so intricate. It was” 
rare indeed that the land occupied by the burghers _ 
belonged to only a single seigneur. Each of the | 
proprietors, among whom it was shared, had his — 
demesnial court which alone was competent in mat- 
ters of real estate. Some of these courts adminis- 





tered, in addition, either high justice or low justice. 
‘The confusion of competencies aggravated still 
further the confusion of jurisdictions. The result 
was that the same man was dependent at the same 
time on several tribunals, according to whether it 
was a question of debts, of crimes, or simply of the 
possession of the land. The difficulties which re- 
sulted therefrom were the greater in that these tri- 
-bunals were not all held in the town, and it was 
‘sometimes necessary to travel a long distance to 
plead before them. Furthermore, they differed 
‘among themselves, in their composition as well as 
in the law they administered. Side by side with the 
demesnial courts there existed almost always an 
older tribunal of aldermen set up, it might be, 
either in the town or in the burg. The ecclesiastical 
court of the diocese drew to it not only matters 
relevant to canonical law, but even all those in 
which a member of the clergy was interested, with- 
out taking count of the number of questions of suc- 
cessions, civil status, marriage, etc. 
glance at the condition of individuals, makes 
the complexity seem greater yet. As the composi- 
tion of the city took form, every contrast and every 
gradation in the status of individuals was to be 
found. Nothing could be more bizarre, in fact, than 
this nascent middle oa he merchants, as has 


THE MIDDLE CLASS 167 





168 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


been seen above, were de facto free men. But this 
was not the case with a very great number of the 
immigrants who, lured by the hope of finding work, 
flocked to the towns. They were almost always na- 
tives of the nearby countryside and so could not. 
dissemble their civil status. The seigneur of the 
demesne from which they had escaped could easily 
seek them out and identify them; people from their 
own village ran into them when they came to town. 
Their parents were known, and it was therefore evi- 
dent that they had been born into serfdom, since 
serfdom was the general status of the rural class. 
It was therefore impossible for them to claim, like 
the merchants, a freedom which these latter en- 
joyed only’ because their true civil status was un- 
known. hus the majority of artisans kept, in the 
town, the status of serfdom in which they had-been 
born. There was, to be sure, an incompatibility be- 
tween their new social status and their traditional 
~legal status. They had ceased to be peasants but 
- they were not able to efface the original stain with 
which serfdom hdd marked the rural class. If they 
sought to dissemble it they did not fail to be rudely 
recalled to reality. It sufficed for their seigneur to. 
claim them; they were obliged to follow him and _ 
be returned to the demesne whence they had fled 
The merchants themselves indirectly resented) 


if 








THE MIDDLE CLASS 169 


| the wrongs of serfdom. If they wished to marry, 
: the woman they chose belonged almost always to 
the serf class. Only the richest among them could 
| aspire to the honor of espousing the daughter of 
some knight whose debts he had paid. For the 
others, their union with a serf would have for its 
/consequence the serfdom of their children,,Com- 


/mon law ascribed to children, in fact, the legal_ 


status of their mother by virtue of the adage partus 
| ventrem sequitur, and it is easy to imagine the ab- 
surd consequences which arose out of this principle 
for familiesé, Marriage caused serfdom to reappear 
in the household. Rancors and conflicts were inevi- 

tably born of so contradictory a situation. The an- 
cient law, in seeking to impose itself upon a social 
order for which it was not adapted, ended in 
manifest absurdities and injustices which called 
irresistibly for reform. 


larger and with its numbers acquired power, the no- 


it. The knights who were settled in the town or in 
the burg no longer had any reason for living there 
after the military importance of these old fort- 
resses had disappeared. There was a distinct ten- 
dency, at least in the North of Europe, to retire to 





bility little by little retreated and gave way before | 


_, On the other hand, while the middle class grew \ 


the country and to leave the towns. Only in Italy’ 


170 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


and in the South of France did the nobles continue 


to have. their residences in the town.y 4 


This fact must be attributed to the’ preservation, 
in those countries, of the traditions and, in a certain 
measure, of the municipal organization of the Ro- 
man Empire. The cities of Italy and Provence had 
been too intimately a part of the territories of 
which they were the administrative centers not to 
have preserved, at the time of the economic decline 
of the eighth and ninth centuries, closer relations 
with it than anywhere else. The nobility, whose 
fiefs were scattered all over the country, did not 
acquire that rural character which typified the no- 
bility of France, Germany or England. They stayed - 
in the towns, where they lived on the revenues from 
their lands. There they built, in the late Middle 
Ages,those towers which today give so picturesque 
an aspect to so many of the old cities of Tuscany. 
They did not divest themselves of the urban stamp 
with which ancient society had been so strongly 
marked.jThe contrast between the nobility and | 
the middle class, therefore, appears less striking in 
Italy than in the rest of Europe. At the era of the 
commercial revival, the nobles of the cities of Lom- 
bardy even interested themselves in the business 
of the merchants and put some of their income into 
business enterprises. It is in this way, perhaps, that _ 





THE MIDDLE CLASS 171 


the development of Italian cities differs most pro- 
foundly from that of the cities of the North. 

In these last it is only in a quite exceptional case 
that we find here and there, as if gone astray in the 
midst of middle class society, a family of knights. 
In the twelfth century the exodus of the nobility 
to the country was completed almost everywhere. 


| This is a development, however, which is still very 


little understood, and it is to be hoped that further 
researches will throw greater light upon it. Mean- 
while it may be assumed that the economic crisis, 
to which the nobility were prey following the di: 


minution of their r ues in the thirteenth cen- 





tury, was not without its influence in their disap- 
pearance from the towns. They must have found 
it advantageous to sell to the burghers the lands 


_ they owned, the altering of which into ground for 
building had enormously augmented their value. 


The status of the clergy was not sensibly modi- 
fied by the influx of the middle class to the towns 


_ and burgs. Out of it arose a few inconveniences for 


them, but also a few advantages. The bishops had 
to battle to maintain intact, in the presence of the 
newcomers, their rights of justice and their rights 
of demesne; the monasteries and the chapters saw 


themselves forced to permit houses to be built on 
4 


172 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


ee eS 





their fields or on their tillages. The patriarchal and © 
demesnial form of government to which the Church | 
had been accustomed suddenly found itself at grips — 
with unexpected claims and needs, out of which 
was to result, at the start, a period of uneasiness 
and insecurity. ) 

On the other hand, however, compensations were 
not lacking. The rental or tribute levied on the lots 
of land given over to the burghers formed an in- 
creasingly fruitful source of revenue. The increase 
in population brought with it a corresponding in- 
crease in the perquisites supplied by baptisms, mar- 
riages and deaths; the yield from offerings went on | 
increasing without let-up; merchants and artisans 
formed pious confraternities affiliated to a church 
or to a monastery in return for annual dues. The 
creation of new parishes, proportionately as the 
number of inhabitants mounted, multiplied the 
numbers and the resources of the secular clergy. 
After the beginning of the eleventh century abbeys, 
on the contrary, were founded in towns only in _ 
very exceptional cases. They were not able to ac- ¥ 
custom themselves to that life, too blustering and — 
busy, and in addition it was no longer possible to | 
find the room necessary for a great religious a 







with the accessory services it required. The Cister- | 


| 
| 
| 
| 








THE MIDDLE CLASS 173 


cian Order, which spread so widely through Europe 
in the course of the twelfth century, organized only 
in the country. 

It was only in the following century that the 
monks were to come back to the towns again. The 
mendicant friars, Franciscans and Dominicans, 
who were to come and settle there, were not merely ' 
a normal development arising from the new orien- 


~ tation which religious fervor took. The principle 


of poverty which they professed made them break 
with the demesnial organization, heretofore the 
support of monastic life. By them monasticism 
was found to be wonderfully well adapted to a 
city atmosphere. They asked no more of the burgh- 
ers than their alms. In place of isolating them- 
selves in the center of vast, silent enclosures, they 
built their convents along the streets. They took 
part in all the agitations, all the miseries as well, 
and understood all the aspirations of the artisans, 
whose spiritual directors they well deserved to be- 
come. 


Chapter VII 


Municipal Institutions 


I'TIES, in their formative period, found them- 

selves in a singularly complicated situation. 
They were faced with problems of all sorts. In 
_ them there existed side by side two populations 
which did not mix, and which presented all the 
contrasts of two distinct worlds. The old demesnial 
organization with all the traditions, all the opin- — 
ions, all the ideas which may not have been born 
of it but which received from it their particular 
stamp, came to grips with wants and aspirations 
which had taken it by surprise, which went counter 
to its interests, to which it was not adapted and 
which, from the very first, it opposed. If it gave 
ground, that was in spite of itself and because the 
new conditions which had to be faced were due to 
causes too profound and irresistible for their effect 
not to be felt. 

The consequences of facts which are so little af- 
fected by human wishes as the increase of popula- 
tion and the expansion of trade could not be 
avoided. Probably those in positions of authority 
in the social order were not able to appreciate the — 





import of the changes that were taking place about 





MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 175 


them. The old order of things sought, at first, to 
maintain its position. Only later, and usually too 
late, did it try to adapt itself. As always happens, 
the change did not come about all at once. And it 
would be improper to attribute, as has frequently 
been done, to “feudal tyranny” or to “sacerdotal 
arrogance” an opposition which is to be explained | 
by more natural incentives. There happened in the 
Middle Ages what has happened so often since 
then. Those who were the beneficiaries of the estab- 
lished order were bent upon defending it, not so 
much, perhaps, because it guaranteed their inter- 
ests, as because it seemed to them indispensable to 
the preservation of society. 

It should be borne in mind, moreover, that this 
social order the middle classes accepted. Their de- 
mands and what might be called their “political 
programme” did not aim in any way at its over- 
throw; they took for granted the privileges and the 
authority of the princes, the clergy, and the nobili- 
ty. They merely wished to obtain, because it was 
necessary to their existence, not an overthrow of 
the existing order but simple concessions. And 
these concessions were limited to their own needs. 
They were completely uninterested in those of the 
rural population from which they had sprung. In 
short, they only asked of society to make for them 


176 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


a place compatible with the sort of life they were 
leading. They were not revolutionary, and if they — 
happened to turn to violence it. was not through 
hate against the government but quite simply to 
force concessions. 

A brief review of the principal points in their 
programme will be enough to show that they did 
not go beyond an indispensable minimum. What 
they wanted, first of all, was personal liberty, 
which would assure to the merchant or the artisan 
the possibility of going and coming, of living where 
he wished and of putting his own person as well 
as that of his children under the protection of the 
seigniorial power. Next came the creation of a 
special tribunal by means of which the burgher 
would at one stroke escape the multiplicity of 
jurisdictions to which he was amenable and the in- 
conveniences which the formalistic procedure of 
ancient law imposed upon his social and economic 
ANN Then came the instituting in the city of a 

“peace’—that is to say, of a penal code—which 
\, would guarantee security. And then camé\ the j 
abolition of those prestations most incompatible | 
with the carrying on of trade and industry, and _ 
with the possession and acquisition of land. 
What they wanted, in fine, was a more or less ex- — 








MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 177 


tensive degree of political autonomy and local 
self-government. 

All of this was very far from forming a coherent 
whole and being justified on theoretical principles. 
Nothing was further from the mind of the original 
middle classes than any conception of the rights ot 
man and citizen,’ Personal liberty itself was not 
claimed as a natural right. It was sought only for. 
the advantages it conferred. This is so true that at 
Arras, for example, the merchants tried to have 
themselves classed as serfs of the Monastery of St. 
Vast in order to enjoy the exemption from the mar- 
ket-tolls which had been accorded to the latter.” 

Jt was not until the beginning of the eleventh 
century that the first direct action was taken by the 
middle classes against the order of things they suf- 
fered from. Their efforts thereafter never halted. 
_ Despite vicissitudes and reverses, the movement of 
reform advanced unhesitatingly towards its goal, 
broke by main force, if necessary, the opposition 
that stood in the way and ended, in the course of 
the twelfth century, by giving the towns those es- 
“sentially municipal institutions which were to be 
_ the basis of their constitutions. fi 


j 


eS Pirenees “L’origine des constitutiéns urbaines au Moyen- 
age,’ Revue Historique, Vol. LVII, pp. 25, 34. 


J MEDIEVAL CITIES 


Everywhere it was the merchants who took the 
initiative and directed events. Nothing was more 
natural than that. They were the most active, the 
richest, the most influential element in the city 
population and they endured with so much the 
more impatience a situation which clashed with 
their interests and belittled their confidence in 
themselves.” The rdle they then played, despite the 
enormous difference in time and conditions, may 
fittingly be compared with that which the capital- 
istic middle class assumed after the end of the 
eighteenth century in the political revolution which 
put an end to the old order of things. In the one 
case as in the other, the social group which was the 
most directly interested in the change assumed the 
leadership of the opposition, and was followed by 
the masses. Democracy in the Middle Ages, as in 
modern times, got its start under the guidance of a 
select few who foisted their programme upon the 
confused aspirations of the people. 

. The episcopal cities were the first to be the scene 
| of combat. It would be a decided mistake to at- 
‘tribute this fact to the personality of the bishops. 
A great number of them distinguished themselves, 
on the contrary, by their manifest solicitude for the 


public weal. Excellent administrators, whose mem- _ 
* H. Pirenne, “L’origine des constitutions urbaines au Moyen- 


178 


age,” Revue Historique, Vol. LVII, PP. 25, 34. 





MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 179 
ory has remained with the people throughout the 


centuries, were by no means rare among them. At 
_ Liége, for example, Notger (972-1018) attacked 
the castles of the robber barons who infested the 


| 


| 


| 
| 


neighborhood, and turned from its course a branch 
of the Meuse to make the city more healthy and to 


' strengthen its fortifications.° 


Similar examples could easily be cited in the case 
of Cambrai, Utrecht, Cologne, Worms, Mainz and 
a number of cities of Germany where the emperors 
strove, up to the time of the investiture struggle, 


But the more the bishops were conscious of their 
duties, the more also they had to defend their gov- 
ernment against the demands of their subjects and 


endeavor to keep them under an authoritative, pa- 
_triarchal regimen. The confusion of spiritual power 
and temporal power in their hands, moreover, 
caused every concession to seem to them to be a. 


to name prelates notable equally for their intel- _ 
_ligence and their energy. 


peril to the Church. It must also not be forgotten ’ 


that their functions obliged them to reside perma- 


-nently in their cities and that they feared, with 
_ good reason, the difficulties which would be caused 


them by the autonomy of the burghers in whose 


8G. Kurth, Notger de Liége et la civilisation au X° siécle, Brus- 
sels, 1905. 


* 
- 


Pe 


f 


/ ABo MEDIEVAL CITIES 


r 


"midst they lived. Finally, it has already been seen 


af i 

rs 

e | 
- 
- 


that the Church had little sympathy with trade. 
This unsympathetic attitude must naturally have 
made the Church deaf to the wishes of the mer- 
chants and of the people who were grouped behind 
them, have prevented an understanding of their 
wants, and given a false impression of their real 
power. Out of this came misunderstandings, clashes, 
and soon an open hostility which, after the begin- 
ning of the eleventh century, was to end in the in- 
evitable.* 

~ The movement began in Northern Italy. There, 
commercial life was older and there the political 
consequences of it were likewise earlier. Unfor- 
tunately very few details are known concerning 
these events. It is certain that the troubles to which 
the Church was then prey could hardly have de- 
layed their precipitation. The inhabitants of the 
towns sided passionately with the monks and the 
priests who were waging a campaign against the 
evil customs of the clergy, attacking simony and 
the marriage of priests, and condemning the inter- 
vention of lay authority in the administration of 


4H. Pirenne, Belgian Democracy, p. 27. F. Keutgen Amter und 
Ziinfte, Jena, 1903, p. 75. We find in the English clergy the 
same hostility towards the middle class, as in the German and 
French clergy. K. Hegel, Stadte und Gilden der germanischen 
Volker, Leipzig, 1891, Vol. I, p. 73. 


the Ws ii, LU che prvire UL UIT 1 dpdacy. ine bDisne- 


ops, named by the Emperor and compromised by 


that fact in itself, thus found themselves face to 


—— ——— eS 








Se Se 


——<—— 





face with an opposition in which mysticism, the 
claims of the merchants and the discontent caused 
by the misery of the industrial workers were allied 
and mutually strengthened. It is certain that the 
nobles took part in the agitation, for it gave them | 
the opportunity to shake off episcopal suzerainty, 


and made common cause with the burghers and the | 
en 


Patarenes—the name by which the conservatives 
contemptuously designated their adversaries. 
In 1057 Milan, even then the queen of the cities 


_ of Lombardy, was in open revolt against the arch- 


bishop.” The vicissitudes of the investiture struggle 
naturally spread the disturbances and gave them a 
turning more and more favorable to the insurgents, 


| proportionately as the cause of the Pope got the 


better of that of the Emperor. There were insti- 


_ tuted, either by the consent of the bishops or by 


violence, magistrates with the title of “‘consuls”’ 

and charged with the administration of the towns.° 
- \ 

he first of these consuls to be mentioned, but prob- : 


ably not the first to exist, appear at Lucca in 1080,/ 


5 A. Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, Vol. III, p. 692. 
6K. Hegel, Geschichte der ReaAteaeeTassung von Ttalien, Leip- 
zig, 1847, Vol. II, p. 137. 


182 


There is a record as Cally dS L0UO0 Ui a coumunal: 
court’’ in that city, a characteristic feature of city 
autonomy which surely must have existed at the 
same date in plenty of other places." The Consuls 
of Milan are not cited before 1107, but they were 
surely much earlier in origin than that. From the 
time they are first mentioned, they show the dis- 
tinctive physiognomy of communal magistrates. 
\ They were recruited among divers social classes,— 
among the capitane?, the valvassores, and the czves 
and represented the communio civitatis. 
The most typical feature of this magistracy was 
its yearly character, wherein it was in distinct con- 
trast to the offices for life which alone the feudal 
régime knew. This yearly feature of the offices was 
the consequence of their elective nature. In laying | 
hold of power, the city population entrusted it to_ 
delegates named by itself. Thus was affirmed the ~ 
principle of control at the same time as that of elec- 
tion. Municipal democracy, from its first attempts 
at organization, created the instruments necessary 
to its proper functioning and unhesitatingly set 
foot on the path which has been followed ev 
since. 

From Italy, the “consulate” soon spread to the 













7R. Davidsohn, Geschichte von Florenz, Berlin, 1896- 1908, Vol. 
I, pp. 345, 350. 


MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 183 


cities of Provence, evident proof of its perfect 
adaptation to the:needs which were felt by the mid+ 
dle class. Marseilles had consuls at the start of the 
twelfth century, or at the latest by 1128;° we find 


them next at Arles and at Nimes, until little by 





8 ee et 


EE 





little they spread in the South of France as com- 
merce made headway from place to place, and with 


it, the political transformation which it brought in 
| 


early at the same time as in Italy, municipal 
institutions arose in the region of\Flanders and the 
North of France. There is nothing-surprising in 
this, since that country, like Lombardy, had\been 
the scene of vigorous commercial activity. Fortun- 


ately the sources of information here are more> 
abundant and more precise. They make it possible 
to follow fairly accurately the march of events. 


It is not the episcopal cities alone which here 


hold the stage. Side by side with them are to be-ob-— 


served other centers of activity, though it is with- 
in their walls that were formed those communes 
whose nature it is most important to consider. The 
oldest, and fortunately also the best known, 1s that 
Yy Cambrai. 

Posing the eleventh century the prosperity of 
é is city was well advanced. At the foot of the or- 


8F. Kiener, Verfassungsgeschichte der Provence, p. 164. 


/ a 


a 


} 


[ 


! 


by 


184 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


iginal town clustered a commercial suburb, which 
had been surrounded in 1070 by a wall. The popu- 
lation of this suburb endured with scant patience 
the authority of the bishop and his castellan. It 
prepared in secret for revolt when, in 1077, Bishop 
Gerard II had to absent himself to go receive in 
Germany the investiture at the hands of the Em- 
peror. He was hardly en route before, under the 
direction of the richest merchants of the town, the 
people arose, took possession of the gates and pro- 
claimed a commune. The poor, the artisans, and 
the weavers, in particular, launched themselves 
still more passionately into the fray when a re- 
former-priest called Ramihrdus denounced to them 
the bishop as a simoniac and inspired in the depths 
of their hearts the mysticism which, at that same 
era, was arousing the Lombard Patarenes. As in 
Italy, religious fervor lent its strength to the polit- 
ical demands and the commune was sworn in the 
dst of general enthusiasm.” 

_ This commune of Cambrai was the oldest of all 


‘that are known north of the Alps. It seems to have 


been both a fighting organization and an instru- — 
ment of public safety. It was necessary, in fact, to 
await the return of the bishop and to prepare to — 





° W. Reinecke, Geschichte der Stadt Cambrai, Marburg, 1896. 


be 






cope with, 





lishing amé g them the necessary solidarity, and it 
was this asociation, sworn to by the burghers on 


teristic ofthat first commune. ft 

Its sucess, however, was ohly ephemeral. The 
bishop, ypon receiving the news, hastened back 
‘and suc¢eded in restoring his authority for the 
‘time beitg/But the experiment of the Cambresians 
was nof long in being imitated./] he following 
years were marked by the establishment of com- 
‘munes in the majority of the towns of Northern 
‘France; at St. Quentin about 1080, at Beauvais 
‘about 1099, at Noyon in 1108-1109, at Laon in 
1115. During the initial period the middle class 
_and the bishops lived in a state of permanent hos- 
tility and, as it were, on the point of open war. 
Force alone was able to prevail between such ad- 
/versaries, equally convinced of their due rights. 
Ives of Chartres exhorted the bishops not to give 
ground and to consider as void the promises which, 
under the threat of violence, they had happened 
to make to the burghers.*° Guibert of Nogent, on 
his part, spoke with mingled contempt and fear of 








om H. L. Labande, Histoire de Beauvais, p. 55. 
i 


MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 185 - 


m. The need of unanimous action was. 
‘imperative/An oath was exacted from all, estab- \\ 






the eve ofbattle, which was the essential charac- j / 


Acumen 


186 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


those ““pestilential communes” which the serfs had 
set up against their lords, to escape avchority and 
to do away with the most legitimate nghts.™* 

In spite of all, however, the communes pre- 
vailed. Not only did they have the strength that 
numbers give, but the Monarchy whichin France, 
starting with the reign of Louis VI, wasbeginning 
to regain lost ground, interested itsel! in their 
cause; Just as the popes, in their conflict with the 
German emperors, had relied upon the Patarenes 


of Lombardy, so the Capetian monarchs of the 


twelfth century favored the efforts of the middle 


classes. // \ 

var Cb probably be no question of ascribing 
to them a political principle. At first glance their 
conduct seems full of contradictions. Yet it is none 


the less true that they evinced a general tendency 
to take the part of the towns. The clear interest of 


the Monarehy was to support the adversaries of 
high feudalism. Naturally, help was given when- 
ever it was possible to do so without becoming ob- 
ligated to these middle classes who in arising 
against their lords fought, to all intents and pur- 
poses, in the interests of royal prerogatives. To ac- 


cept the King as arbitrator of their quarrel was, for 


the parties in conflict, to recognize his sovereignty. 


11 Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, edit. G. Bourgin, p. 156. 


MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 187 


_ The entry of the burghers upon the political scene 
had as a consequence the weakening of the con- 
tractual principle of the Feudal State to the ad- 
vantage of the principle of the authority of the 
Monarchial State. It was impossible that royalty 

should not take count of this and seize every chance 

to show its good will to the communes which, with- 
out intending to do so, labored so usefully for it. 

In specially designating by the name of “‘com- 
munes”’ those episcopal cities of the North of 
France where municipal institutions were the re- 

sult of insurrection, it is well to exaggerate neither 
their importance nor their originality. There is no 
reason for claiming that there was any essential 

difference between commune-cities and other cities. 
They were distinguished from one another only by 

| incidental characteristics. At bottom their nature 

_ was the same, and in reality all were equally com- | 

_ munes. In all of them, in fact, the burghers formed 

| a COrps, a uneversitas, a communitas, a communio, 
all the members of which, conjointly answerable# 

[te one another, constituted the inseparable parts. _ 

_ Whatever might be the origin of its enfranchtses~ 

ment, the city of the Middle Ages did not consist 















+ 


ina simple collection of individuals; it was itself 
_an individual, but a collective individual, a legal | 
person. All that can be claimed in favor of 


' 
' 
€ 
¢ 
» 





the | 
eat 


we 
| 
i 


188 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


communes s/récto sensu is a particular distinctive- 
ness of institutions, a clearly established separa- 
tion of the rights of the bishop and those of the 
burghers, and a. manifest preoccupation to safe- 
guard the rights of the latter by a powerful cor- 
porate organization. But all of that derived from 
the circumstances which presided over the birth of 
the communes. Although they preserved the traces 
of their insurrectionary composition, it does not 
necessarily follow that they should be assigned, for 
that reason, a special place in the ensemble of cities. 
It can even be observed that certain ones among 
them enjoyed prerogatives less extensive, a juris- 
diction and an autonomy less complete, than those 
of localities in which the commune was only the 
mark of the advent of a peaceful evolution. It is 
a manifest error to reserve for them, as is some- 
times, done, the name of “‘collective seigniories.” 
We shall see later that all fully developed cities 
were such seigniories. 

Violence, therefore, was far from being an essen- 
ial factor in the creation of municipal institutions. 
dn the majority of towns subject to the power of a 
lay prince, their growth was accomplished, in gen- 
eral, without need of recourse to force. And it is not. 
necessary to attribute this situation to the partic- 
ular good-will which the lay princes had shown 






iia 


——$—$<————$ — 


MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 189 


towards political liberty. /On the other hand all ,, 
the incentives which inspired the bishop to oppose 
the burghers carried no weight with the princes. /, 
They professed no hostility in regard to trade; on/ 
the contrary, they were experiencing its good ef- 
fects. It increased traffic in their territories, and 
by that very fact augm@ited the revenues from 
their tolls and the activity of their mints which 
_were forced to meet an increasing demand for cur- 
rency. Having no spot as capital and incessantly 

_ travelling about their demesnes, they lived in their 
towns only at rare intervals and therefore had no 
reason for quarelling with the burghers over the ad- ? 
ministration of them. It is quite characteristic that 
‘Paris, the only city which before the end of the \, 
twelfth century could be considered a real capital,\ ° 
‘did not succeed in obtaining an autonomous mu- — 
‘nicipal constitution. But the’ interest ‘which im-, 

| pelled the King of France to keep~control of he 
customary residence was completely lacking with 
‘the dukes and counts, as peripatetic as the King 
was sedentary. Lastly, they did not view altogether 
with displeasure the act of the burghers in seizing 
the power from the castellans who had become an 
hereditary class and whose strength was a cause 

of uneasiness to them. They had, in short, the same 
incentives as the King of France for looking with 


gf 


—_—- —— _ -- -_-- 









190 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


favor upon these tendencies, since they weakened 
the status of their vassals. It is not on record, how- 
ever, that they systematically lent them their aid, 
They confined themselves, in general, to letting 
them alone and their attitude was almost always 
of benevolent neutrality. 
wast region offers a better chance for studying mu- 
nicipal origins in a purely lay environment than 
does F' anders¢In this great country, which stretched 
_-trom the shores of the North Sea and the Zealand 
Islands to the frontiers of Normandy, the episco al 
cities never rivalled in importance and wealth the 
commercial and industrial cities. Térouanne, the 
diocese of which comprised the watershed of the 
Yser, was and always remained a half-rural ham- 
let. Arras and Tournai, which extended their spir- _ 
itual jurisdiction over the rest of the territory, de- 
veloped to an appreciable extent only in the course 
of the twelfth century. On the contrary, Ghent, 
Bruges, Ypres, St. Omer, Lille and Douai, where 
were gathered together in the course of the tenth 
century active merchant colonies, give an unusual- 
ly clear picture of the birth of municipal institu- 
tions. Chey lend themselves to this so much the beta 
ter in that, all being organized in the same way 
and showing the same characteristics, the informa 






MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 191 





tion of which each gives us its share-can be safely 
, combined into one general picture.” 
All these cities show, first, the characteristic fea- 
_ ture of having been organized around a central 
| burg which was, so to speak, their nucleus. At the 
foot of this burg was grouped a portus, or ‘new 
| burg,” populated by merchants to whose numbers 
| were soon added artisans, either free or serf, and 
where, after the eleventh century, the textile in- 
| dustry came to be concentrated. Over the burg as 
over the portus extended the authority of the cas- 
) tellan. More or less important parcels of land oc- 
Bpied by the immigrant population belonged to 
the abbeys, others to the Count of Flanders. A trib- 
_unal of aldermen had its seat in the burg under the 
| presidency of the castellan. This tribunal had in 
other respects no competency relative to the city. 
Its jurisdiction extended over all the castellany of 
which the burg was the center, and the members 
who composed it resided in that same castellany 
_and came to the burg only on the days of hearings. 
For ecclesiastical jurisdiction, to which were amen- 
able a number of matters, it was necessary to go to 
_the episcopal court of the diocese. 





12 H. Pirenne, “Tes villes flamandes avant le XII° siécle,” Revue 
de l'Est et du Nord, 1905, Vol. I, p.9; Belgian Democracy, p. 64; 
Histoire de Belgique, 4th edit., Vol. I, p. 170. 





192 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


A variety of obligations weighed upon the land . 
and the inhabitants, whether of the burg or of the 
portus: ground rents, prestations in money or in 
kind destined for the upkeep of the knights charged 
with the defence of the burg, and tolls levied on all 
merchandise brought by land or water. 7 

All this was of long standing, created at the 
height of the demesnial and feudal régime, and 
was in no way adapted to the new needs of the mer- 
chant population. Not being made for it, the or- 
ganization which had its seat in the burg not only 
rendered no service but on the contrary interfered 
with activities. The survivals of the past bore down 
with all their weight upon the needs of the present. 
Obviously, for reasons which have been given 
above and to which it is unnecessary to return, the 
middle class felt far from content and exacted the 
reforms necessary to their free expansion. 

In these reforms it devolved upon them to take 
the initiative, for they could not rely on either the 
castellans, the monasteries, or the barons whoul | 
lands they occupied, to bring them about. But it 3 
was also necessary, in the midst of a population so 
heterogeneous as that of the portws, for a group of © 
men to take control of the mass and to Dae enough A 
power and prestige to give it directio Hohe mer-:_ 
chants, in the first half of the oe century, — 


















MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 193 
resolutely assumed this role. Not only did they 


_ constitute the wealthiest element in each town, the 


most active and the most desirous of change, but 
they had in addition the strength that union gives. 
The needs of commerce early impelled them, as has 
been seen above, to organize in confraternities 
called gilds or hanses—autonomous corporations in- 
dependent of all authority and in which their will 
alone made the law. Freely elected chiefs, “deans” 
or “counts of the hanse” (Dekanen, Hansgrafen), 


supervised the maintenance of a voluntarily ac- 


cepted discipline. At regular intervals the col- 
leagues assembled to drink and deliberate over 


_ their interests; a treasury, supported by their con- 
tributions, provided for the needs of the society; a 
community house (Gé/dhalle) served as the place 
of their meetings. Such was the Gild of St. Omer, 
about 1050, and it may be assumed from this 
“instance that very probably similar associations 


existed at the same period in all the merchant 
colonies of Flanders.” 


13 G, Espinas and H. Pirenne, “Les coutumes de la gilde mar- 
chande de Saint Omer,” Le Moyen-dge, 1901, p. 196; H. Pirenne, 
“La hanse flamande de Londres,” Bulletin de l’ Academie Royale 
de Belgique, Classe des lettres, 1899, p. 65. For the réle played by 
the gilds in England, see the fundamental work of Charles 
Gross, The Gild Merchant, Oxford 1890. See also K. Hegel, 
Stadte und Gilden. der germanischen Volker, Leipzig, 1891.; 
H. Van der Linden, Les gildes marchandes dans les Pays-Bas 


2 


ae 


a eat Ee 


194 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


The prosperity of trade was so intimately bound | 
up with the organization of the towns in which it 
had located that the members of the gild were 
almost automatically charged with making pro- 
vision for the needs that were most pressing. The 
castellans had no reason to restrain them from 
meeting, through their own resources, those emer- 
gencies that were clearly apparent. They permitted 
them to “extemporize,”’ as it were, in official com- 
munal administration. At St. Omer an arrange-. 
ment made between the gild and the castellan, 
Wulfric Rabel (1072-1083), permitted the for- 
mer to attend to the cases of the burghers. Thus, 
without having any legal warrant therefor, the 
merchant association devoted itself of its own ac-— 
cord to the organization and the management of 
the nascent city. It made up for the impotence of 
public power. At St. Omer the gild devoted a part 
of its revenues to the construction of defence works 
and to the maintenance of the streets. There is no 
doubt but that other Flemish towns, its neighbors, 
did the same. The name of ‘“‘counts of the Hanse”? 
which the treasurers of the city of Lille kept all 
through the Middle Ages is sufficient proof, in the 
absence of other records, that there also the chiefs. 


au Movyen-adge, Ghent, 1890; C. Koehne, Das Hansgrafenamt, | 
Berlin, 1893. 


~ 


MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 195 


of the voluntary corporation of merchants drew 


upon the treasury of the gild for the benefit of their 


. fellow citizens. At Audenarde the name of Hans- 


graf was borne up to the fourteenth century by a 


“magistrate of the commune. At Tournai, as late as 


the thirteenth century, city finances were placed 
under the control of the Charité St. Christophe, 


that is to say of the merchant gild. At Bruges the 


contributions of the “brothers of the hanse” sup- 
ported the municipal treasury up until its disap- 


_ pearance at the time of the democratic revolution 


¢ 


: 





| 


of the fourteenth century. 


he result of all this, manifestly, was that the \y 
‘gilds were, in the region of Flanders, the initiators | 
of city autonomy. Of their own accord they charged © 
themselves with a task which no one else had been: 
“able to carry out. Officially they had no right to 
act as they did; their intervention is to be explained) 


‘solely by the cohesion which existed among their 


_ members, by the influence their group enjoyed, by 


the resources they disbursed, and finally by the un- 


derstanding they had of the collective needs of the | 


middle-class population. It can be stated, without 


exaggerating, that in the course of the eleventh / | 
century the chiefs of the gild performed, de facto, 


the functions of communal magistrates in every 


town. /) 


jf 


2 nearer Some 


a 


196 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


They were doubtless the ones, also, who led the 
Counts of Flanders to take an interest in the de- 
velopment and the prosperity of the towns. In 
1043 Baldwin IV obtained from the monks of 
St. Omer the concession on the basis of which the 
burghers built their church. At the beginning of the 
reign of Robert the Friesian (1071-1093), exemp- 

tions from tolls, grants of land, privileges limiting 
the episcopal jurisdiction or the requirements of 
military service were granted in considerable num- 
ber to the cities then in process of formation. Rob- 
ert of Jerusalem favored the city of Aire with “‘lib- 
erties” and exempted, in 1111, the burghers of 
jres from the judiciary duel. 
/The result of all this was that little by little the — 
/ ‘middle class stood out as a distinct and privileged 
-. group in the midst of the population of the country. 
i From a simple social group given over to the car- 
\' rying on of commerce and industry, it was trans- _ 
“formed into a legal group, recognized as such by ~ 
the princely power. And out of that legal status — 
itself. was to come, necessarily, the granting of an _ 
independent legal organization./ The new law ~ 
needed as its organ a new tribu Al. The old alder-— 
manic district courts, sitting in the burgs and 
administering justice in accordance with a cus-_ 
tom that had become archaic and incapable of ac- 


pale, 












MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 197 


_ commodating its rigid formalism to the needs of a 
community for which it had not been created, had 
to give way to courts whose members, recruited 
_ from among the burghers, were able to render them 
a justice adequate to their desires and conforming 
_ to their aspirations—a justice, in fine, which was 
their justice. It is impossible to say exactly when 
_ this important development took place. The oldest 
- reference in Flanders to an aldermanic court,—that 
is to say of such a court peculiar to one city,— 
_ dates back to the year 1111 and has to do with 
_ Arras. But there is nothing to prevent the assump- 
_ tion that aldermanic courts of this kind must have 
_ already existed at the same period in the more im- 
_ portant localities such as Ghent, Bruges or Ypres. 
Whatever may have been the case elsewhere, the 
_ beginning of the twelfth century saw this decided 
_ innovation come to pass in all the cities of Flan- 
_ ders. The disturbances which followed the assas- 
sination of Count Charles the Good, in 1127, 
_ permitted the burghers to realize in full their po- 
litical programme. The pretenders to the county, 
William of Normandy, and later Thierry of Alsace, 
in order to rally them to their cause conceded to 
them the demands they addressed. 
The charter granted to.St, Omer in 1127. may be 
considered as the point of departure of the polit- 





a 
cet 


198 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


ical programme of the burghers of Flanders.” It 
recognized the city as a distinct legal territory, pro- 
vided with a special law common to all inhabitants, 
with special aldermanic courts and a full | com- 
munal autonomy. Other charters in the course of 
the twelfth century ratified similar grants to all 
the principal cities of the county. Their statys 
was thereafter secured and sanctioned by written 
warrants. 

On the other hand care must be taken not to at- 
eal to the city charters an exaggerated import- 
ance.’® Neither in Flanders nor in any other region 
of Europe did they embrace the whole of the city 
law. They limited themselves to fixing the prin- 
cipal outlines, to formulating some of the essen- 
tial principles, to settling a few particularly im- 
portant conflicts. Most of the time they were the 


product of special circumstances and they took 


count only of matters which were under debate at 
the time they were drawn up. They cannot be con- 
sidered as the result of systematic planning and 
legislative deliberation similar to that out of which © 
are born, for example, modern constitutions. If the 
middle classes have kept watch over them through-.- 


14 A. Giry, Histoire de la ville de St. Omer, Paris, 1877, p. 371. 
15 N. P. Ottokar, Opiti po istorii franzouskich gorodov, Perm, 
1919. 





NS SO 





MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 199 


out the centuries, with an extraordinary solicitude, 
preserving them under triple lock in chests of iron 
and surrounding them with a quasi-superstitious 
respect, it is because they considered them as the 
palladium of their liberty. It is because they per- 
mitted them, in case of violation, to justify their 
r_bellion, but it is not because they included the 
whole of their rights. They were not, so to speak, 
more than the framework of the latter. Round 


_ about their stipulations existed and continued un- 
_ceasingly to develop a thick vegetation of rights, 
usages, and unwritten but none the less indispens- 
_ able privileges. This is so true that a number of 
charters themselves foresaw and recognized in ad- 
vance the further development of city law. The 
chronicler Galbert informs us that the Count of 
_ Flanders accorded to the burghers of St. Omer in 


1127: “ut die in diem consuetudinarias leges suas 


' corrigerent, ’—that is to say, the power of correct- 
_ ing from day to day their municipal laws." There 


was, therefore, more in the law of the city than 
what was contained in the terms of the charters. 
They specified merely fragments of it. They were 
full of gaps; they were concerned with neither 
order nor system. We need not expect to find in 


16 Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bor, 
Comte de Flandre, edit. H. Pirenne, Paris, 1891, p. 87. 


200 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


them the fundamental principles out of which 
came later evolutions, as for example, Roman law 
evolved from the law of the Twelve Tables. 

It is possible, however, in examining their prin- 
ciples and supplementing one by another, to char- 
acterise in its general traits the city law of the Mid- 
dle Ages as it developed in the course of the twelfth 
century in the different regions of Western Europe. 
There is no need to take account, since we are seek- 
ing only to trace the general outline, either of the 


_ difference in States or even in nations. City law was 


“a phenomenon of the same nature as, for example, 


that of feudalism. It was the consequence of a so- 


cial and economic situation common to all peo- 


ples. ‘Taking it by regions, there are of course nu- 
merous differences in detail. But at bottom it was 
everywhere the same and it is solely concerning this 


pean basis that we shall deal in the follow- 


(AY 


KSA 


_ appeared within its walls. Whatever might be the 


ing paragraphs. 

The first thing which should be considered is the 
status of the individual as it was when city law was — 
definitely evolved. That status was one of freedom: b 
It is anecessary and universal attribute of the mid- 2 
dle class. Each city established a “franchise” in ) 
this respect. Every vestige of rural serfdom’ dis- 





differences and even the contrasts which wealth set 


4 


MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 201 


_ up between men, all were equal as far as civil status | 
_ was concerned. “The air of the city makes free,” 


says the German proverb (Die Stadtluft macht 


| frez), and this truth held good in every clime. Free- 


1 
i 
| 








edon-of old, used to be the monopoly of a privi- 
leged class. By means of the cities it again took 
_ its place in society as a natural attribute fi the cit- 
_izen. Hereafter it was enough to reside on city soil 


| to acquire it. Every serf who had lived for a year 


and a day within the city limits had it by definite 


tight: the statute of limitations abolished all rights 
| which his lord lord exercised over his person and chat- 
tels._ Birth meant little. Whatever might be the 
mark with which it nah 

his cradle, it vanished in the atmosphere of the city. ? | 
This freedom, which at the beginning only mer-‘ 
chants had enjoyed de facto, was now the common 
_ right of all the burghers de jure. j 


stigmatized the infant in 


If there could still exist, here tof there among 


| them, a few serfs, these latter were not members of 


the city population. They were hereditary servitors 
of the abbeys or of the seigniories which retained in 
the cities bits of land not subject to city law and 
where the old state of things was prolonged. 

urgher and freeman had become synonymous 


Haw? reedom, in the Middle Ages, was an at- 


tribute as inseparable from the rank of citizen of 


202 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


a city as it is in our day of that of the citizen of a 
State. 
/ JN ith freedom of person there went on 7 
¢ footing, in the city, the freedom of the land. 
merchant community, land, in fact, could nét re- 
main immobile and be kept out of commerce by un- 
wieldy and diverse laws that prevented its free 
conveyance and kept it from serving as a means of 
credit and acquiring capital value. This was the 
more inevitable in that land, within the city, 
changed its nature—it became ground for build- 
V3 ing. It was rapidly covered with houses, crowded 
one against the other, and i acreased in value in pro- 
portion as they multipli /Thus it automatically 
came about that the owner of a house acquired in 
the course of time the ownership, or at the least 
possession, of the soil upon which it was built 
Everywhere the old demesnial land was rand 
formed into “‘censal estate,” or ‘‘censal allodium.” 

/ City hold thus became free hold. He who occupied 
it was not bound by more than the land taxes due 
to the owner of the land,,when he did not happen 
to be himself the owner: / He could freely transfer 
it, convey it, mortgage it and make it serve as se- 
curity for capital he might borrow, In selling a _ 
mortgage on his house, the burgher’ procured the _ 
liquid capital he needed; in buying a mortgage on _ 





MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS ~ 203 


_ the house of another, he assured himself of an in- 

come proportionate to the sum expended. He 

_ placed, as we would say today, his money out at 
interest. Compared to the old feudal or demesnial 

_ tenures, tenure in city law—tenure in Weichbild 

| or Burgrecht as they called it in Germany, or 

| bourgage in France—thus showed a well-marked } 

individuality. | 

_ Subject to new economic conditions, city land 

: ended by acquiring a new law, suited to its nature. 

The old land-courts probably did not abruptly dis- — 

| appear. The enfranchisement of the soil did not 

_ have as consequence the spoliation of the old pro- 

_prietors. Very often they kept, when it was not 

bought back from them, portions of the land of 

_ which they had been lords. But the seigniory which 

_ they still exercised over them no longer carried _ 

_ with it the personal dependence of the tenants. i—™ 

| City law not only did away with personal servi- 

& and restrictions on land, but also caused the; i 

_ disappearance of the seigniorial rights and | / 

| 





— 


—— 






claims which interfered with the activity of com 
merce and eg de he market-tolls (teloneum) 
which were such ahandicap to the free circulation 
of goods were particularly odious to the burghers, 
and they early made the effort to get rid of them. /, 
The chronicler Galbert shows that this was, in’ 





204 # MEDIEVAL CITIES 


Flanders in 1127, one of their chief preoccupa- 
tions. It was because the pretender, William of 
Normandy, did not keep his promise in this par- 
ticular that they rose against him and called Thier- 
ry of Alsace. In the course of the twelfth century, 
everywhere, voluntarily or under compulsion, the 

| market-tolls were modified. Here, they were bought 
off by means of an annual fee; there, the manner 
of levying them was changed. In almost every case 
they were placed under the supervision, and sub- 
ject to the jurisdiction, of the city authorities. It 
was the city’s magistrates who henceforth took 
charge of supervising trade and who took the place 
of the castellans and the old demesnial function- 
aries in the standardization of weights and meas- 
ures and in the judicial administration of markets 
and industry generally. 

If the market-tolls were modified in passing un- 
der the authority of the city, it was otherwise with: 
the other seigniorial rights which, incompatible 
with the free functioning of the life of the city, 
were inevitably condemned to disappear altogether. 
Mention might be made of the surviving charac- 
teristics of the agricultural era which had been left 
impressed on the physiognomy of the city: com- | 
mon ovens and mills, at which the seigneur com-— 
pelled the inhabitants to grind their wheat and 


MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS * 205. 


bake their bread; monopolies of every sort, by vir- 
tue of which he enjoyed the privilege of selling at 
certain periods, without competition, the wine 
from his vineyards or the meat from his cattle; the / 
right of shelter, which imposed upon the burghers 
the obligation of furnishing him lodging and sub- 
Sistence during his stays in the city; the right of 
fequisition, by which he appropriated to his service 
the boats or the horses of the inhabitants; the right 
of summons to arms, imposing the obligation of 
following him to war; customs of every sort and 
every origin which had become oppressive and vex- 
atious because they had long since become useless, 
such as that which forbade the building of bridges 
over the water courses or that which compelled the 
inhabitants to assist in the maintenance of the 
knights composing the garrison of the “old burg.” 
Of all this there remained, at the end of the twelfth 
century, hardly more than the memory. The lords, 
after having tried resistance, finished by giving! 
way. They realized, in the course of time, that their 
manifest interest commanded them not to hinder 
the development of the cities, in order to preserve 
a few meagre revenues, but to favor it by doing 
away with the obstacles that stood in its path. 
They began by taking count of the incompatibility 


| 


of these old prestations with the new state of things, 








206 © MEDIEVAL CITIES 


and they ended by ae Tae them as 







erings and extortions.’ 


ike the status of individuals, the pee of 
e land, and the fiscal system, the fundamental 





character of the law itself underwent a transforma- 
tion in the cities. The complicated and formalistie 
procedure, the compurgations, the ordeals, the ju- 
diciary duel—all these crude methods of proof. 


which too often let chance or sheer luek decide the 


issue of a trial, were not long, in their turn, in 
adapting themselves to the new conditions of a 
city environment. The old rigid forms of contract, 
which custom had established, disappeared as rap- 
idly as economic life became more complicated and. 


active. [he judiciary duel evidently could not be. 
long retained in the midst of a population of mer 
chants and artisans. Proof through witnesses was 
likewise early substituted in place of proof through 


compurgators, before the city magistracy bench, 
The Wergild, the old blood-price, gave way to a 


system of fines and corporal punishments. Finally, 


legal delays, originally so long, were considerably 


reduced. 

It was not only procedure that was modifies 
The very content of the law evolved in parallel 
fashion. In questions of marriage, succession, liens, 
debts, mortgages, and particularly i in questions of 


Se ee 





% 


MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS % 207 


business law, a whole new body of legislation was 
coming into being in the cities, and the jurispru- 
dence of their tribunals created a civil practice, 
increasingly amplified and exact. 

City law was characterised no less from the 
criminal point of view than from the civil. In such 
‘aggregations as the cities were, of men from every 
station in life, in this environment where abounded 
wanderers, yagabonds and adventurers, a rigorous 
discipline was necessary to the maintenance of se- 
curity. It was equally necessary for intimidating 
the thieves and bandits who, in every civilization, 
‘are drawn towards commercial centers. This is so 
‘true that as early as the Carolingian era the towns, 
within the walls of which the wealthy class sought 
‘shelter, seemed to enjoy a special “peace.’’*’ This 
is that same word “peace” which was used in the 
‘twelfth century to designate the criminal law of 


‘decapitation, castration, amputation of limbs. It 
applied in all its rigor the /ex taléonis: an eye for 





an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Its evident purpose was \ 


to repress derelictions, through terror:/All who en- 


f 
17 Capitularia regum Francorum, edit. Boretiuy, Vol. II, p. 405. 


the'city. 

his city“peace was a law of exception, more Se 
vere, more harsh, than that of the country districts. \ 
It was prodigal of corporal punishments: hanging, | 


tow 


* 
208 # MEDIEVAL CITIES 


“ tered the gates of the city, whether nobles, freemen 
» or burghers, were equally subject to it. Under it the _ 
city was, so to speak, in a permanent state of siege. _ 
But in it the city found a potent instrument of | 
unification, because it was superimposed upon the 
jurisdictions and seigniories which shared the soil; 
it forced its pitiless regulation on all. More than 
community of interests and residence, it contrib- 
uted to make uniform the status of all the inhab-_ 
itants located within the city walls and to create 
the middle class. The burghers were essentially a 
eroup of homines pacis—men of the peace. The | 
peace of the city (pax véllae) was at the same time > 
the law of the city (Jex villae). The emblems 
which symbolized the jurisdiction and the autono- . 
my of the city were above all emblems of peace: 
such as were, for example, the cross or the sym- 
bolic set of stone steps in the market-place, the | 
belfries (Bergfried), the towers of which arose 
from the heart of the cities of the Netherlands and 
Northern France, and the statues of Roland, which, 
wete’so numerous in Northern Germany. | 
Uf By virtue of the peace with which it was en-_ 

\ (dowed, the city formed a distinct legal district. The | 
legal principle of territoriality carried with it that 
of personality. Equally subject to the same penal 
law, the burghers inevitably shared, sooner or later, 






















MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 209 


in the same civil law. The practice of the city was 
extended up to the limits of the peace and the city 
formed, within the circumference of its ramparts, 
a community of law. 
| Ut he peace, on the other hand, contributed large 
(; in making the city a commune. It had, in effect, \ 
the oath as its sanction. It supposed a conjuratio 
of all the city population. And the oath taken by 
the burgher was not confined to a simple promise 
of obedience to municipal authority. It involved 
strict obligations and imposed _,a strict duty to 
maintain and respect the peace! Every juratus— 
that is to say, every burgher sworn—was obliged 
_ to lend,a helping hand to any burgher calling for 
help. Thus the peace created, among all its mem-| 
bers, a permanent solidarity. Hence the term 
“brothers” by which they were sometimes desig- 
nated, or the word amécitia used at Lille, for ex- 
-ample, as synonym for pax. And since the peace 
_ covered the whole city population, the latter, there- 
_ fore, was a commune. The very names which the 
_ municipal magistrates bore in a number of places, 
_—“warders of the peace” at Verdun, “safeguard 
of friendship” at Lille, “jurors of the peace” at 
* Valenciennes, Cambrai and many other cities,— 
make it easy to see the close relationship between 


_ the peace and the commune. 
en 





210 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


Other causes naturally contributed to the birth | 


of city communes. The most potent among them 


| was the need, early felt by the burghers, of a tax 


“system. Funds were necessary for public works of 
the most pressing nature, and, above all, for the 
construction of the city wall. Everywhere the need 
of building this protecting rampart was the point 
of departure for city finances. In the cities of the 
region of Liége the communal tax bore the charac- 
teristic name of firmétas (‘firmness’). At Angers 
the oldest municipal accounts were those of the 
“Clouaison, fortification et emparement’ of the 
city. Elsewhere part of the fines were appropriated 
ad opus castr?,—for the improvement of the forti- 
fications. 

Taxes, naturally, provided the means of secur- 
ing the needed resources. To subject the taxpayers 


thereto, recourse had to be had to compulsion. | 
Everyone was obliged to participate according to | 
his means, in the expenses incurred in the interests 5 | 
of all. Whoever refused to support the charges 
which they involved was barred from the city. The _ 

latter was therefore a commune, an obligatory as- — 


sociation, a moral personality. According to the 
phrase of Beaumanoir, it formed a “‘compaignie, 
laquelle ne pot partir ne deseurer, angois convient 


qu'elle tiegne, voillent les parties ou non qui en la 


} 
| 
i 
| 





MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS ph isi 


Com paignie sont.’ That is to say, a society which 
could not be dissolved, but which must needs exist 
independently of the wishes of its members.” ei 
Se hus the city of the Middle Ages was simul- i 
taneously a legal district and a commune. / 
There remain to be examined the agencies by 
which were met the demands its nature imposed. 
First of all, inasmuch as it was an independent 
legal district, it by all means had to have its own 
jurisdiction. City law being bounded by the city 
walls, in contrast to the regional law, the law of 
without, a special tribunal had to be charged with 
applying it and the burghers had to have, in conse- 
quence, the assurance of their privileged status. 
This is a clause which is lacking in hardly any mu- 
nicipal charter: that the burghers could be a 
only by their own magistrates. The latter, as a nec- 
essary consequence, were recruited from their midst. 
It was essential that they be members of the com- 
mune and naturally the latter, to a greater or less 
degree, took part in their nomination. Here, it had 
the right of designating them to the seigneur; there, 
the more liberal system of election was applied; 
_ still elsewhere, recourse was had to complicated 
formalities: elections in several steps, drawing by 


‘ 
18 Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, edit. Salmon, Vol. I, 


Xo MEDIEVAL CITIES 


lot, and so on, which manifestly had for their pur- 
pose the obviating of bribery and corruption. Most 


often, the president of the tribunal (mayor, bailiff, | 


etc.) was an officer of the seigneur’s. It happened, 


nevertheless, that the city had something to say in 
his choosing. It had in every case an assurance, in 
the oath which he must take to respect and defend 
its privileges. 

By the beginning of the twelfth century, and in 
some cases even by the end of the eleventh, a few 
cities were already in possession of their special 
tribunal. In Italy, in the South of France, in sev- 
eral parts of Germany, its members bore the name 
of “consuls.” In the Netherlands and in Northern 
France they were called échevins, or aldermen. In 
still other places they were designated as jures, or 
jurors. In accordance with the locality, the extent 
of the jurisdiction they exercised also varied quite 
noticeably. They did not have it everywhere in its 
entirety. It frequently happened that the seigneur 


reserved to himself certain special cases. But these — 


local differences are of little importance. The es- 


sential thing is that every city, by the very fact — 
that it was recognized as a legal district, had its — 


own judges. Their competency was set by the law 
of the city and limited to the territory in which it 


applied. Sometimes in place of a single body of — 





MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 213 
magistrates there were several of them, each hav- 
ing its own special attributes. In many cities, and 
particularly in the episcopal cities where municipal 
institutions were the result of insurrection, were to 
be seen, side by side with the aldermen over whom 
the seigneur had more or less influence, a body of 
jurors presiding over matters of peace and special- 
ly competent in cases arising out of the communal 
statutes. But it is impossible to go into details 
here; it will suffice to have indicated the general 
evolution, without regard to its innumerable 
modifications. 

In its status as a commune, the city was admin- 
istered by a council (consélium, curia, etc.). This 
council sometimes coincided with the tribunal, and 
the same individuals were at once both judges and 
administrators for the middle class. Most often, 
however, it had its own individuality. Its mem- 
bers received their authority from the commune. 
They were its delegates, but it did not abdicate 
entirely in their favor. Nominated for a very short 
time, they could not usurp the power that was en- 
trusted to them. Not until later, when the consti- 
tution of the city had been developed and when 
administration had become complicated, did they 
form a real assembly upon which the influence of 

the people made itself felt but feebly. At the start 


B14 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


it was quite otherwise. The original jurors, charged 
with watching over the public weal, were only rep- 
resentatives very similar to thé selectmen of New 
England towns, mere executors of the collective 
will. The proof of this lies in the fact that at first 
they lacked one of the fundamental characteristics 
of every organized body—a central authority, a 
president. The ““burgomasters” and the “mayors” 
of the communes were, in fact, of relatively recent 
creation. [hey did not exist much before the thir- 
teenth century. They belong to an era in which the 
character of institutions was tending to be modi- 
fied, and in which the need of a greater centraliza- 
tionand a more independent power was being felt. 

) “Phe council carried on the routine administra- 

YA on. It had charge of finances, commerce, and in- 
dustry. It ordered and supervised public works, 
organized the provisioning of the city, regulated the 
equipment and the deportment of the communal 
army, founded schools for children, provided for _ 
the upkeep of almshouses for the old and the poor.g 
The statutes it decreed formed a genuine body off | 
municipal legislation of which there existed, north 
of the Alps, scarcely any prior to the thirteenth 


century. But a close study of these statutes leads _ 
to the conviction that they merely developed and | 


clarified an older form of government. 





MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 215 


Nowhere, perhaps, was the spirit of innovation 
and the practical judgment of the middle class 
more highly manifest than in the realm of admin- 
istration.” The work done there seems the more 
noteworthy in that it was an original creation. 
Nothing in the prior state of things could have 
served as a model for it, since the needs for which 
it provided were new needs. This is made clear 
by a comparison, for example, of the financial sys- 
tem of the feudal era with that which the city com- 
-munes instituted. In the first, taxes were merely a 
fiscal prestation, an established and perpetual obli- 
gation taking no count of the means of the tax- | 
payer, bearing down only on the people, and the + 
proceeds of which were added to the demesnial re- 
sources of the prince or seigneur who collected 
them, without any part of them being directly ap- 
propriated for the public interest. ‘The second, on 
the contrary, recognized neither exceptions nor 
privileges. All burghers, enjoying equally the ad- 
vantages of the commune, were equally obligated 
to contribute towards the expenses. The quota of 
each was in proportion to his means. At the start 


19 The monumental work of G. Espinas, La vie urbaine de Douai 
au Movyen-dge, Paris, 1913, 4 vols., should be consulted to get 
an idea of the wealth of city regulation in this respect. 


216 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


it was generally calculated on the basis of income. — 
Many cities kept consistently to this practice up — : 
to the end of the Middle Ages. Others substituted. 4 
for it the excise,—that is to say, the indirect tax | 
levied on articles of consumption and especially on C 
foodstuffs,—in such a way that the rich and the ~ 
poor were taxed according to their expenditures. — 1 
But this city-excise was in no way connected with 
the old market-tolls. It was as flexible as the latter — 
were strict, as variable in accordance with the cir- _ 
cumstances or the needs of the public as the latter 
were immutable. But whatever might be the form _ 
they took, the proceeds of these taxes Ly entirely © 


















devoted to the needs of the commune,/By the end 
_ of the twelfth century, a fiscal system had been 
developed and at this era can be discovered the first _ 
_ traces of municipal accounts. 

The provisioning of the city and the regulating — 
of commerce and industry testify more clearly still 
to the burghers’ aptitude for solving the social and 
economic problems which their conditions of exist- — 
ence put up to them. They had to provide for the - 
subsistence of a sizeable population, obliged to get — 
its food-supply from without; to protect their ~ 
workmen from foreign competition; to make cer-_ 
tain of their supply of raw materials and to insure 


MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 217 


the exporting of their manufactures. They accom- 
plished it by a system of regulation so marvellous- 
ly adapted to its purpose that it may be considered 
a masterpiece of its kind. The city economy was 
worthy of the Gothic architecture with which it 
was contemporary. It created with complete thor- 

Ry it created ex 
nihtlo—a social legislation more complete than 
that of any other period in history, including our 
own a doing away with the middlemen between 
buyér and seller, it assured to the burgher the bene- 
fit of a low cost of living; it ruthlessly pursued 
fraud, protected the worker from competition and 
exploitation, regulated his labor and his wage, 
watched over his health, provided for apprentice- 
ship, forbade woman- and child-labor, and at the 
same time succeeded in keeping in its own hands 
the monopoly of furnishing the neighboring coun- 
try with its products and in opening up distant 
markets for its trade. 

All this would have been impossible if the civic 
spirit of the burghers had not been equal to the 
tasks that were laid upon them. It is necessary, in 
fact, to go back to antiquity to find as much devo- 
tion to the public good as that of which they had 
given proof. Unus subveniet alteri tamquam fratré 


oughness—and, it may well be sai 4 


218 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


swo—‘‘let each help the other like a brother’— 
says a Flemish charter of the twelfth century,” 


and these words were actually a reality. As early | 
as the twelfth century the merchants were expend- | 


ing a good part of their profits for the benefit of 


-, their fellow citizens,—building churches, founding 


hospitals, buying off the market-tolls. The love 
lof gain was allied, in them, with local patriotism. 
Every man was proud of his city and spontane- 
ously devoted himself to its prosperity. This was 
because, in reality, each individual life depended 
directly Upony the collective life of the municipal 
associationé Ba he commune of the Middle Ages had, 
in fact, all the essential attributes which the State 
| exercises today. It guaranteed to all its members 
‘the security of his person and of his charrelafom 
side of it he was in a hostile world, surrounded by 
perils and exposed to every risk. In it alone did he 
have a shelter, and for it he felt a gratitude which 
bordered upon love. He was ready to devote him- 
self to its defence, just as he was always ready to 
bedeck it and make it more beautiful than its neigh- 
bors: Those magnificent cathedrals which the thir- 
teenth century saw erected would not have been 


20 Map of the city of Aire in 1188, in L. A. Warnkoenig, Flan- 
drische Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte, Tubingen, Baer: Vol. III, 
appendix, p. 22. 








MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS 219 


conceivable without the joyous alacrity with which 
the burghers contributed, by gifts, to their con- 
struction. They not only were houses of God; they 
also glorified the city of which they were the great- 
est ornament and which their majestic towers ad- 
vertised afar. They were for the cities of the Mid- 
dle Ages what temples were for those of antiquity. 
To the ardor of local patriotism corresponded 
its exclusivism. From the very fact that each city 
constituted a State, cities saw in one another only 
rivals or enemies. They could not rise above the — 
sphere of their own interests. They were self-cen- 
tered, and the feeling which they bore for their 
neighbors resembles very closely, within narrower 
limits, the nationalism of our day. The civic spirit 
which animated them was singularly egoistic. They 
jealously reserved to themselves the liberties they 
enjoyed within their walls. The peasants who é 
dwelt round about them did not seem to them to be * 
compatriots at all. They thought only of profitably 
exploiting them. With all their might they stood 
on guard to prevent the peasants from freeing 
themselves from the industrial system of which the 
cities had a monopoly. The task of provisioning 
these cities was likewise imposed upon the peas- 
ants, who were subjected to a tyrannical protec- 
torate whenever it was possible to do so, as in Tus- 


cany, for example, where Florence subjected to its 
yoke all the surrounding countryside. 

We are, however, toughing here upon events | 
which were not if ara with all their conse- 
quences until the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. It will suffice to have briefly sketched a ten- 
dency which, in the period of origins, was hardly 
more than a suggestion of what was to come. Our 
intention has been merely to define the city of the 
Middle Ages after having depicted its origin. Fur- 
thermore, it has been possible to note only its prin- 
cipal traits. The physiognomy which has been out- 
lined resembles those countenances obtained by 
photographing portraits superimposed one on the 
other. The contours of it give a countenance com- — 
mon to all and belonging to none of them. | 
\\If we wished, in ending this too-long chapter, | 
yates up its essential points in one phrase, per- — 

haps it would be possible to say that the city of the 
{ Middle Ages, as it existed in the twelfth century, | 
was a commercial and industrial commune living _ 
in the shelter of a fortified enceinte and enjoying 
a law, an administration and a jurispdudence of 
exception which made of it a collective, privileged — 
ersonality. \\ 


*% 


/ 220 MEDIEVAL CITIES 
| 












Chapter VIII 


Cities and European Civilization 


; 


HE birth of cities marked the beginning of a 

new era in the internal history of Western 
Europe. Until then, society had recognized only 
two active orders: the clergy and the nobility. In ™ 
taking its place beside them, the middle class 
rounded the social order out or, rather, gave the 
finishing touch thereto. Thenceforth its composi- 
tion was not to change; it had all its constituent 
elements, and the modifications which it was to 
undergo in the course of centuries were, strictly 
speaking, nothing more than different combina- 
tions in the alloy. 

_ Like the clergy and like the nobility, the middle © 
class was itself a privileged order. It formed a dis- 
tinct legal group and the special law it enjoyed 
isolated it from the mass of the rural inhabitants 
which continued to. make up the immense majority 
of the population. Indeed, as has already been 
seen, it was obliged to preserve intact its excep- 
tional status and to reserve to itself the benefits 
arising therefrom. Freedom, as the middle class 
conceived it, was a monopoly. Nothing was less 
liberal than the caste idea which was the cause of 


' gneur. Upon the suspension of commerce, nothing 
impelled him to ask of the soil a surplus which it 


222 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


its strength until it became, at the end of the Mid- 
dle Ages, a cause of weakness. Nevertheless to that — 
middle class was reserved the mission of spreading 
the idea of liberty far and wide and of becoming, 
without having consciously desired to be, the means 
of the gradual enfranchisement of the rural classes. 
The sole fact of its existence was due, indeed, to 
have an immediate effect upon these latter and, 
little by little, to attenuate the contrast which at” 
the start separated them from it. In vain it strove — 
to keep them under its influence, to refuse them a 
share in its privileges, to exclude them from en- — 
gaging in trade and industry. It had not the power ~ 
to“arrest an evolution of which it was the cause y 
and which it could not suppress save by itself i 
vanishing. t 
For the formation of the city groups disturbed — 
at once the economic organization of the country. 
districts. Production, as it was there carried on, had 
served until then merely to support the life of the 
peasant and supply the prestations due to his sei- 













would have been impossible for him to get rid of, 
since he no longer had outside markets to call upon. 
He was content to provide for his daily bread, cer- 
tain of the morrow and longing for no ameliora- 


CITIES AND CIVILIZATION 223 


tion of his lot, since he could not conceive the pos- 
sibility of it. The small markets of the towns and 
the burgs were too insignificant and their demand 
was too regular to rouse him enough to get out of . 
his rut and intensify his labor. But suddenly these 
markets sprang into new life. The number of buy- 
ers was multiplied, and all at once he had the as- 
surance of being able to sell the produce he brought 
to them. It was only natural for him to have prof- 
ited from an opportunity as favorable as this. It 
depended on himself alone to sell, if he produced 
enough, and forthwith he began to till the lands 
which hitherto he had let lie fallow. His work took 
on a new significance; it brought him profits, the 
chance of thrift and of an existence which became 
more comfortable as it became more active. The 
situation was still more favorable in that the sur- 
plus revenues from the soil belonged to him in his 
own right. The claims of the seigneur were fixed by 
demesnial custom at an immutable rate, so that the 
increase in the income from the land benefited only 
the tenant. 

/But the seigneur himself had a chance to profit 
from the new situation wherein the development 
of the cities placed the country districts. He had 
“enormous reserves of uncultivated land, woods, 
_heaths, marshes and fens. Nothing could be simpler 


ee 


224 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


than to put them under cultivation and through 
them to profit from these new outlets which were 
becoming more and more exigent and remunerative 
as the towns grew in size and multiplied in num- 
ber, The increase in population would furnish the 
necessary hands for the work of clearing and drain- 
ing. It was enough to call for men; they would 
not fail to show ups) 

By the end of the reveal century the move- — 
ment was already manifest in its full force. Mon- ih 
asteries and local princes thenceforth were busy ~ 
transforming the sterile parts of their demesnes in- j 
to revenue-producing land. The area of cultivated | 
land which, since the end of the Roman Empire, ~ 

/ had not been increased, kept growing continually ' 
ereater. Forests were cleared. The Cistercian Or- i 
der, founded in 1098, followed this new path from 
its very origin. Instead of adopting for its lands — 
the old demésnial organization, it intelligently — 
adapted itself to the new order of things. It adopt- ~ 
ed the principle of farming on a big scale and, de- — 
pending upon the region, gave itself over to the — 
most remunerative form of production. In Flan- 
ders, where the needs of the towns were greater — 
since they themselves were richer, it engaged in rais- — 
ing cattle. In England, it devoted itself particular- 


N 





yw 





CITIES AND CIVILIZATION 225 


ly to the sale of wool, which the same cities of 
Flanders consumed in greater and greater quantity. 
Meanwhile, on all sides, the seigneurs, both lay 
and ecclesiastic, were founding “new” towns. So 
was called a village established on virgin soil, the 
occupants of which received plots of land in return 
for an annual rental. But these new towns, the 
number of which continued to grow in the course 
of the twelfth century, were at the same time free 
towns. For in order to attract the farmers the sei- 
eneur promised them exemption from the taxes 
_which bore down upon the serfs. In general, he re- 
served to himself only jurisdiction over them; he 
abolished in their favor the old claims which still 
existed in the demesnial organization. The charter 
of Lorris (1155) in the Gatinais, that of Beau- 
mont in Champagne (1182), that of Priches in the 
Hainault (1158) present particularly interesting 
_ types of charters of the new towns, which were also 
~ to be found everywhere in neighboring countries. 
- That of Breteuil in Normandy, which was taken 
over in the course of the twelfth century by a num- 
ber of localities in England, Wales, and even Ire- 
land, was of the same nature. 
_4- Thus a new type of peasant appeared, quite dif- 
fear from the old. The latter had serfdom as a 





oe 
| 


226 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


/ characteristic; the former enjoyed freedom. And ~ 
_ this freedom, the cause of which was the economic 


disturbance communicated by the towns to the or- 
ganization of the country districts, was itself 


_ copied after that of the cities. The inhabitants of 
the new towns were, strictly speaking, rural bur- ~ 


ghers. They even bore, in a good number of char- 
ters, the name of burgenses. They received a legal 


constitution and a local autonomy which was mani- — 
festly borrowed from city institutions, so much so — 


that it may be said that the latter went beyond the 


circumference of their walls in order to reach the — 


country districts and acquaint them with liberty. 


And this new freedom, as it progressed, was not — 
long in making headway even in the old demesnes, 


whose archaic constitution could not be maintained 


in the midst of a reorganized social order. Either — 


by voluntary emancipation, or by prescription or 
usurpation, the seigneurs permitted it to be gradu- 


ally substituted for the serfdom which had so long | 


been the normal condition of their tenants. The 


form of government of the people was there 1 


changed at the same time as the form of govern- 


ment of the land, since both were consequences of — 


an economic situation on the way to disappear. 


Commerce now supplied all the necessaries which > 
the demesnes had hitherto been obliged to obtain 





re A 
) 


a 








CITIES AND CIVILIZATION 227 


by their own efforts. It was no longer essential for 
each of them to produce all the commodities for 
which it had use. It sufficed to go get them at some ~ 
nearby city. The abbeys of the Netherlands, which 
had been endowed by their benefactors with vine- 
yards situated either in France or on the banks of 
the Rhine and the Moselle where they produced 
the wine needed for their consumption, began, at 
about the start of the thirteenth century, to sell 
these properties which had now become useless and 
whose working and upkeep henceforth cost more 
than they brought in.* 

No example better illustrates the inevitable dis- 
appearance of the old demesnial system in an era 
transformed by commerce and the new city econo- 
my. Trade, which was becoming more and more 
active, necessarily favored agricultural production, 
broke down the limits which had hitherto bounded 
it, drew it towards the towns, modernised it, and at 
the same time set it free. Man was therefore de- / 
tached from the soil to which he had so long been/ 
enthralled, and free labor was substituted more 
and more generally for serf labor. It was only in 
regions remote from commercial highways that 


1H. Van Werveke, “Comment les établissements religieux belges 
se procuraient-ils du vin au haut Moyen-age?,” Revue belge 
de philologie et d’histoire, 1923, Vol. II, p. 643. 


228 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


there was still perpetuated in its primitive rigor 
the old personal serfdom and therewith the old 
forms of demesnial property. Everywhere else it 
disappeared, the more rapidly especially where 
towns were more numerous. In Flanders, for ex- 
ample, it hardly existed at all after the beginning 
of the thirteenth century, although, to be sure, a 
few traces were still preserved. Up to the end of 
the old order there were still to be found, here and 
there, men bound by the right of mortemain or _ 
subject to forced labor, and lands encumbered by _ 
various seigniorial rights. But these survivals of the _ 
past were almost always simple taxes and he who 
paid them had, for all of that, full personal liberty. — f 
\/ The emancipation of the rural classes was only _ 
one of the consequences provoked by the economic — 
revival of which the towns were both the result — 
and the instrument; It coincided with the increas- 
‘ ing importance of ‘liquid capital. During the de 
mesnial era of the Middle Ages, there was no othe 
form of wealth than that which lay in real estate. 
It ensured to the holder both personal liberty and 
social prestige. It was the guaranty of the privi- 
leged status of the clergy and the nobility. Exclu- 
sive holders of the land, they lived by the labor of 
their tenants whom they protected and whom they 


nr 
















CITIES AND CIVILIZATION 229 


ruled. The serfdom of the masses was the necessary 
consequence of such a social organization. There 
was no alternative save to own the land and be a 
lord, or to till it for another and be a serf. 


But with the origin of the middle class there 
took its place in the sun a class of men whose exist- \, 
ence was in flagrant contradiction to this tradition’ 


al order of things. The land upon which they set- 
tled they not only did not cultivate but did not 
even own. [hey demonstrated and made increas- 
ingly clear the possibility of living and growing 
rich by the sole act of selling, or producing ex- 
change values. 

Landed capital had been everything, and now 


by the side of it was made plain the power of liquid | 


capital. Heretofore money had been sterile. The 
great lay or ecclesiastic proprietors in whose hands 
was concentrated the very scant stock of currency 
in circulation, by means of either the land taxes 
which they levied upon their tenants or the alms 
which the congregations brought to the churches, 
normally had no way of making it bear fruit. To 
be sure, it was often the case that monasteries, in 
time of famine, would agree to usurious loans to 
nobles in distress who would offer their lands as 
security. But these transactions, forbidden other- 


FEA 


~urable in money During the course of the eleventh 


230 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


wise by canonical law, were only temporary ex- 
pedients.* As a general rule cash was hoarded by 
its possessors and most often changed into vessels, 
or ornaments for the Church, which might be melt- 
ed down in case of need. Trade, naturally, released 
this captive money and restored its proper func- 
tion. Thanks to this, it became again the instru- 
ment of exchange and the measure of values, and 
since the towns were the centers of trade it neces-— 
sarily flowed towards them. In circulating, its 
power was multiplied by the number of transac- 
tions in which it served. Its use, at the same time, 
became more general; payments in kind gave way 
more and more to payments in money. 

WA new motion of wealth made its appearance: 
that of mercantile wealth, consisting no longer in 
land but in mo rd or commodities of trade meas- dl 











century, true capitalists already existed in a num- — 
ber of cities; several examples have been cited 
above, to which it is unnecessary to refer again 
here. These city capitalists soon formed the habit 
of putting a part of their profits into land.?/The 
best means of consolidating their fortune and their 
2R. Génestal, Réle des monastéres comme établissements de 1 
crédit, Paris, 1901. 


8H. Pirenne, “Les périodes de l’histoire sociale du capitalisme,” 
Revue belge de philologie et d’ histoire, 1923, Vol. II, p. 269. 


CITIES AND CIVILIZATION za 


credit was, in fact, the buying up of land. They 
devoted a part of their gains to the purchase of real 
estate, first of all in the same town where they 
dwelt and later in the country.’“But they changed 
themselves, especially, into money-lenders. The 
economic crisis provoked by the irruption of 
trade into the life of society had caused the ruin of, 
or at least trouble to, the landed proprietors who 
had not been able to adapt themselves to it. For 
in speeding up the circulation of money a natural) 
result was the decreasing of its value and by that 
very fact the raising of all prices. The period con- 
temporary with the formation of the cities was a 
period of high cost of living, as favorable to the 
business men and artisans of the middle class as it 
was painful to the holders of the land who did not 
succeed in increasing their revenues. By the end of: 
the eleventh century many of them were obliged 
to have recourse to the capital of the merchants in 
order to keep going. In 1127 the charter of St. 
Omer mentioned, as a current practice, the loans 
contracted among the burghers of the town by the 
knights of the neighborhood. 

But more important operations were already 
current at this era. There was no lack of merchants 
rich enough to agree to loans of considerable 
amount. About 1082 some merchants of Liége lent 





/ 


232 MEDIEVAL CITIES ‘ 


money to the abbot of St. Hubert to permit him to : 
buy the territory of Chavigny, and a few years later | 
advanced to the bishop Otbert the sums necessary ; 
to acquire from Duke Godfrey, on the point of de- — 
parting for the Crusades, his chateau of Bouillon.’ 
The kings themselves had recourse, in the course of 
the twelfth century, to the good services of the city ‘ 
financiers. William Cade was the money-lender to ~ 
the King of England.*® In Flanders, at the begin- — 
ning of the reign of Philip Augustus, Arras had be- y 
come preeminently a city of bankers. William the ¢ 
Breton describes it as full of riches, avid of lucre — 
and glutted with usurers: 

Ahrabatum ... potens urbs ... plena 

Divitiis, inhians lucris et foenore gaudens.” | 

The cities of Lombardy and, following their ex- — 
ample, those of Tuscany and Provence, went much — 
further in carrying on that commerce which the 
Church vainly sought to oppose. By the beginning 
of the thirteenth century, Italian bankers had — 
already extended their operations north of the Alps_ 
and their progress there was so rapid that a half ~ 
century later, thanks to the abundance of their 


Si ae! 





4H. Pirenne, “Les périodes de V’histoire sociale du capitalisme,” 
Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 1923, Vol. Il, p. 281. 
5M. T. Stead, “William Cade, a Financier of the Twelfth 
Century,” English Historical Review, 1913, p. 209. } 
6 Guillaume le Breton, “Philipidis,’ Monumenta Germaniae 
historica, Vol. X XVI, p. 321. 4 


CITIES AND CIVILIZATION 233 


capital and the more advanced technique of their 
procedure, they had everywhere taken the place of 
the local lenders. 

v The power of liquid capital, concentrated in the 
cities, not only gave them an economic ascendancy 
but contributed also towards making them take 
part in political life. For as long as society had 
known no other power than that which derived 
from the possession of the land, the clergy and the 
nobility alone had had a share in the government., 
The feudal hierarchy was made up entirely on the 
basis of landed property. The fief, in reality, was 
only a tenure and the relations which it created be- 
tween the vassal and his liege lord were only a 
particular modality of the relations which existed 
between a proprietor and a tenant. The only dif- 
ference was that the services due from the first to 
the second, in place of being of an economic nature, 
were of a military and political nature. Just as each’ 
local prince required the help and counsel of his 
vassals so, being himself a vassal of the King, was 
he held on his part to similar obligations. Thus 
only those who held land entered into the direction 
of public affairs. They entered into them, more- 
over, only in paying through their own person; 
that is to say, using the appropriate expression: 
consilio et auxtlio—by their counsel and help. Of 


234 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


a pecuniary contribution towards the needs of their 
sovereign there could be no question at an epoch 
when capital, in the form of real estate alone, 
rved merely for the maintenance of its possessors.. 
JK erhaps the most striking character of the feudal 
State was its almost absolute lack of finances. In 
it, money played no role. The demesnial revenues 
of the prince replenished only his privy purse. It 
was impossible for him to increase his resources by 
taxes, and his financial indigence prevented him 
from taking into his service revocable and salaried 
agents. Instead of functionaries, he had only hered- 
itary vassals, and his authority over them was lim- 
ited to the oath of fidelity they gave him. 

But as soon as the economic revival enabled him 
to augment his revenues, and cash, thanks to it, 
began to flow to his coffers, he took immediate ad- — 
vantage of circumstances. The appearance of bai- | 
liffs, in the course of the thirteenth century, “ai . 
4/ the first symptom of the political progress which 

was going to make it possible for a prince to de- % 
velop a true public administration and to change © 
his suzerainty little by little into sovereignty. — 
For the bailiff) was, in every sense of the term, a — 
functionary. With theSe revocable office-holders, — 
.. remunerated not by grants of land but by steward- — 
ships, there was evinced a new type of govern- 


t ¥ 











CITIES AND CIVILIZATION 235 


ment. The bailiff, indeed, had a place outside the 
feudal hierarchy. His nature was quite different 
from that of the old justices, mayors, or castel- 
Jans who carried on their functions under an hered- 
itary title. Between them and him there was the 
same difference that there was between the old 
serfholds and the new freeholds. Identical eco- 
nomic causes had changed simultaneously the or- 
ganization of the land and the governing of the 
people. Just as they enabled the peasants to free 
themselves, and the proprietors to substitute the 


-quit-rent for the demesnial mansus, so they en- 


abled the princes, thanks to their salaried agents, 
to lay hold of the direct government of their ter- 
ritories. This political innovation, like the social 
innovations with which it was contemporary, im- 


plied the diffusion of ready cash and the circula- 
‘tion of money This is quite clearly shown to be 
the case by the fact that Flanders, where commer- 
‘cial life and city life were developed sooner than 
in the other regions of the Netherlands, knew con- 
siderably in advance of these latter the institution 
of bailiffs. 


The connections which were necessarily estab- 


lished between the princes and the burghers also 
had political consequences of the greatest import. 
It was necessary to take heed of those cities whose 





236 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


increasing wealth gave them a steadily increasing 
importance, and which could put on the field, in 
case of need, thousands of well equipped men. The 
feudal conservatives had at first only contempt for 
the presumption of the city militia. Otto of Frei- 
singen was indignant when he saw the communes 
of Lombardy wearing the helmet and cuirass and 
permitting themselves to cope ,with the noble 
’ knights of Frederick BarbarossayBut the outstand- — 
ing victory won by these clodhoppers at Legnans 
(1176) over the troops of the Emperor soon dem-_ 
onstrated what they were capable of An France, 
the kings did not neglect to have rec urse to their” 
services and to ally them to their own interests. — 
They set themselves up as the protectors of the 
communes, as the guardians of their liberties, and — 
made the cause of the Crown seem to them to be ~ 
solidary with the city franchises. Philip Augustus 
must, have garnered the fruits of such a skilful pol- — 
ics ‘The Battle of Bouvines (1214), which defin- y 
itely established the sway of the Monarchy in the © 
interior of France and caused its prestige to radiate 
over all Europe, was due in great part to military — 
contingents from the cities. _ 
The influence of the cities as not less i impor- 
tant in England at the same era, although it was 
manifest in a quite different way. Here, instead of 










CITIES AND CIVILIZATION p42 te) 


supporting the monarchy, they rose against it by 
the side of the barons. They helped, likewise, in the 
creation of parliamentary government, the distant 
origins of which may, be dated back to the Magna 
Charta (1343). ¥ irene > \ 2 

It was not onifin in Baeland, furthermore, that 
the cities claimed and obtained a more or less large 
share in the government. Their natural tendency 
led them to become municipal republics. There is 
but little doubt but that, if they had had the power, 
they would have everywhere become States within 
the State. But they did not succeed in realizing 
this ideal save where the power of the State was 
impotent to counterbalance their efforts. 

This was the case with Italy, in the twelfth cen- 
tury, and later, after the definite decline of the im- 
perial power, with Germany. Everywhere else they 
had not succeeded in throwing off the superior 
authority of the princes, whether, as in Germany 
and France, the Monarchy was too powerful to 
have to capitulate before them, or whether, as in 
the Netherlands, their particularism kept them 
from combining their efforts in order to attain an 
independence which immediately put them at grips 
with one another. They remained as a general rule, 
then, subject to the territorial government. 

But this latter did not treat them as mere sub- 


238 MEDIEVAL CITIES F 


jects. It had too much need of them not to have — 
regard for their interests. Its finances rested in ~ 
great part upon them, and to the extent that they 
augmented the power of the State and therewith 
ie expenses, it felt more and more frequently the 
need of going to the pocketbooks of the burghers. — 
It has already been stated that in the twelfth cen- 
tury it borrowed their money. And this money the — 
cities did not grant without security. They well j 
knew that they ran great risks of never being reim- — 
bursed, and they exacted new franchises in return — 
for the sums which they consented to loan. Feudal — 
law permitted the suzerain to exact of his vassals — 
only certain well-defined dues which were restrict- 
ed to particular cases always identical in character. | 
It was therefore impossible for him to subject them ~ 
arbitrarily to a poll-tax and to extort from them — 
‘supplies, however badly needed. In this respect the — 
charters of the cities granted them the most solemn 
cuarantees. It was, then, imperative to come to 
‘terms with them. Little by little the princes formed 
| the habit of calling the burghers into the councils” 
of prelates and nobles with whom they conferred 
upon their affairs. The instances of such convoca- 
tions were still rare in the twelfth century; they 
multiplied in the thirteenth; and in the fourteenth 





















CITIES AND CIVILIZATION 239 


century the custom was definitely legalised by the 
institution of the Estates in which the cities ob- 
tained, after the clergy and the nobility, a place 
which soon became, although the third in dignity, 
the first in importance. “ 

Although the middle classes, as we have just 
seen, had an influence of very vast import upon 
the social, economic and political changes which 
were manifest in Western Europe in the course 
of the twelfth century, it does not seem at first 
glance that they played much of a role in the in- 
tellectual movement. It was not, in fact, until the 
fourteenth century that a literature and an art was 
brought forth from the bosom of the middle classes, 
animated with their spirit. Until then, science re- 
mained the exclusive monopoly of the clergy and 
employed no other tongue than the Latin. What 
literature was written in the vernacular had to do 
solely with the nobility, or at least expressed only 
the ideas and the sentiments which pertained to the 
nobility as a class, Architecture and sculpture pro- 
duced their masterpieces only in the construction 
and ornamentation of the churches. The markets 
and belfries, of which the oldest specimens date 
back to the beginning of the thirteenth century— 
as for example the admirable Cloth Hall of Ypres, 


240 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


destroyed during the Great War—remained still 
faithful to the architectural style of the great re- 
ligious edifices. 
‘ Upon closer inspection, however, it does not take 
long to discover that city life really did make its 
~ own contribution to the moral capital of the Mid- 
dle Ages. To be sure, its intellectual culture was 
dominated by practical considerations which, be- 
fore the period of the Renaissance, kept it from 
putting forth any independent effort. But from the 
very first it showed that characteristic of being an 
exclusively lay culture.y By the middle of the 
twelfth century the municipal councils were busy 
founding schools for the children of the burghers, 
. Which were the first lay schools since the end of an- 
tiquity. By means of them, instruction ceased to be 
furnishéd exclusively for the benefit of the novices 


of the monasteries and the future parish priests. 
~Knowledge of reading and writing, being indis- 
pensable to the practice of commerce, ceased to be 4 
reserved for the members of the clergy alone, The — 


ri 


burgher was initiated into them long before the — 


noble, because what was for the noble only an in- 


tellectual luxury was for him a daily need. Natur- © 
ally, the Church immediately claimed supervision 


over the municipal schools, which gave rise to a 


number of conflicts between it and the city author-_ 














a) 





CITIES AND CIVILIZATION 241 


ities. Che question of religion was naturally com: 
pletely foreign to these debates. They had no other 
cause than the desire of the cities to control the 
schools created by them and the direction of which 
they themselves intended to keep. 

However, the teaching in these communal 
schools was limited, until the period of the Renais- 
sance, to elementary instruction. All who wished 
to have more were obliged to turn to the clerical 
establishments. It was from these latter that came 
the “clerks” who, starting at the end of the twelfth 
century, were charged with the correspondence and 
the accounts of the city, as well as the publication 
of the manifold Acts necessitated by commercial 
life. All these “clerks”? were, furthermore, laymen, 


the cities having never taken into their service, in | 


contradistinction to the princes, members of the 
clergy who by virtue of the privileges they enjoyed 
would have escaped their jurisdiction. 

IT he language which the municipal scribes em- 
ployed was naturally, at first, Latin. But after the 
first years of the thirteenth century they adopted 
more and more generally the use of national 
idioms. It was by the cities that the common tongue 
- was introduced for the first time into administra- 
tive usagey Thereby they showed an initiative 
which corresponded perfectly to that lay spirit of 


/ 


242 MEDIEVAL CITIES 




















which they were the preeminent representatives in 
the civilization of the Middle Ages. - 

This lay spirit, moreover, was allied with the 
most intense religious fervor. If the burghers were - 
very frequently in conflict with the ecclesiastic 
authorities, if the bishops thundered fulsomely_ 
against them with sentences of excommunication, 
and if, by way of counterattack, they sometimes 
gave way to decidedly pronounced anti-clerical 
tendencies, they were, for all of that, none the less 
animated by a profound and ardent faith. For 
proof of this is needed only the innumerable reli- 
gious foundations with which the cities abounded, 
the pious and charitable confraternities which were 
so numerous there. Their piety showed itself via 
a naiveté, a sincerity and a fearlessness which easi 
ly led it beyond the bounds of strict orthodoxy. f A t 


all times, they were distinguished above everything 
else by the exuberance of their mysticism. It wa 
this which, in the eleventh century, led them to side 
passionately with the religious reformers who were 
fighting simony and the marriage of priests; which, 
in the twelfth century, spread the contemplatiy ve 
asceticism of the Béguines and the Bégards; which, 
in the thirteenth century, explained the enthusias- 
tic reception which the Franciscans and » h 


Dominicans received. But it was this also which as as 


e 


: 
aes 


} 
: 


CITIES AND CIVILIZATION 243 


sured the success of all the novelties, all the exag- 
gerations and all the deformations of religious 
thought. After the twelfth century no heresy 


cropped out which did not immediately find some 


adepts. It is enough to recall here the rapidity and 
the energy with which the sect of the Albigenses 
spread. 

Both lay and mystic at the same time, the bur- 
chers of the Middle Ages were thus singularly well 
prepared for the réle which they were to play in 
the two great future movements of ideas: the Re- 
naissance, the child of the lay mind, and the Re- 


formation, towards which religious mysticism was! 


leading. 








Bebhography 
Sources 


N no country does there exist a complete collec- 
tion devoted to the sources of city law. We shall 
confine ourselves to mentioning here: 
Baxvarp, A., British Borough CET 1042-1216 
Cambridge, 1913 
Gaupp, E. T., Deutsche PRO des Mittel- 


alters 
2 vols., Breslau, 1851 


GENGLER, H. G., Deutsche Stadtrechte des Mittel- 


alters 
Erlangen, 1852-1866 


Codex juris municipalis Germaniae medti aevi 
Erlangen, 1863 


Giry, A., Documents sur les relations de la royau- 


pane les villes en France de 1180 4 1314 
Paris, 1885 


Krutcen, F., Urkunden zur stadtischen Verfas- 


sungsgeschichte 
Berlin, 1901 


Works 


Ir is useless to mention, despite the importance 
which they had in their own times, a number of 
works which have become antiquated today. The 
chief characteristics of the most important among 
them will be found in H. Pirenne, “‘L’origine des 


246 MEDIEVAL CITIES § 


constitutions urbaines au Moyen-age,” Revue his-— 
torique, Vol. LIII, 1893. For England, see J. Tait, @ 
“The Study of Early Municipal History in Eng- 
land,” Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 
LOZ. 


Asutey, W. J., ““The Beginnings of ee, Life a | 
the Middle Ages,”’ Quarterly Journal of Eco- 
nomics, Vol. X, 1896. 

Batvarp, A., The English Borough in the Twelfth 
Century . 
Cambridge, 1914. a 

Bateron, M., “The Laws of Breteuil,” English ‘ 
lore oe Review, Vol. XV, 1900 ) 

Betow, G. v. “Zur Entstehung der deutschen 


Stadtverfassung,” Historische Zettschrift, 
Vols. LVIII-LIX : 
Die Entstehung der deutschen Stadtgemeinde 
Diisseldorf, 1889 
Der Ursprung der deutschen Stadtverfassung 
Disseldorf, 1892 

Brancuet, A., Les enceintes romaines de la Gaule 
Paris, 1907 

BromMaErt, W., Les chdatelains de Flandre 
Ghent, 1915 

Bonvatot, E., Le tiers-état d’ apres la charte de 
Beaumont et ses filiales 
Paris, 1884 

Des Marez, G., Etude sur la propriété fonciére 
dans les villes du Moyen-age et specialement 
en Flandre. | 
Ghent, 1898 





BIBLIOGRAPHY 247 


Doren, A. J., Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der 
Kaufmannsgilden des Mittelalters 
Leipzig, 1893 

Espinas, G., La vie urbaine de Douai au Moyen- 
age 
4 vols., Paris, 1913 

Fracnu, J., Les origines de l ancienne France, Vol. 


Paris, 1893 

GinestTaL, R., La tenure en bourgage 
Paris, 1900 

Geriacu, W., Die Entstehungszeit der Stadthe- 
festigungen in Deutschland 
Leipzig, 1913 

Giry, A., Histoire de la ville de Saint-Omer et de 
ses institutions jusqu’au XIV® stécle 
Paris21577 
Les établissements de Rouen 
2 vols., Paris, 1883-1885 

Gross, C., The Gild Merchant 
2 vols., Oxford, 1890 

Hecet, K., Die Entstehung des deutschen Stadte- 
WESENS 
Leipzig, 1898 
Stadte und Gilden der germanischen Volker 
im Mittelalter 
2 vols., Leipzig, 1891 

Heremmeon, M. veW. “Burgage Tenure in Medi- 
eval England,” Harvard Historical Studies, 
Vol. XX, 1914 

Houve.in, P., Essai historique sur le droit des 

_marchés et des foires 

Paris, 1897 


248 MEDIEVAL CITIES 


KeutceEn, F., Untersuchungen uber den Urspraaaa 
der PeuTehen Stadtverfassung 
Leipzig, 1895 


Lasanpg, H. L., Histoire de Beauvais et de ses in- \" 


stitutions communales 
Paris, 1892 


Lucuaire, A., Les communes frangaises al époque 
des Capétiens directs, new edition, with intro- — 


duction by L. Halphen 
Paris, 1911 

Maitianp, F. W., Township and Borough 
Cambridge, 1898 


Orroxar, N., Opité po istorii franzoukish gorodov — 


Perm, 1919 


Petit-Dutaitus, C. E., L’origine des villes en © 
Angleterre, Vol. I of the French translation of — 


Stubbs’ Constitutional History 


Prrennge, H., “L’origine des constitutions urbaines ~ 


au Moyen-age,” Revue historéque, Vols. 
IGOR APA, ahefopii berets 
“Villes, marchés et marchands au Moyen- 


Age,” Revue historique, Vol. LXVII, 1898 


“Ta hanse famande de Londres,” Bulletin de 


l’ Academie de Belgique, Classe des lettres, 
1899 


“Les villes flamandes avant le XII siécle,” 


Annales del Est et du Nord, Vol. I, 1905 
Belgian Democracy—Its Early History 
Manchester, 1915 


Prov, M., Les coutumes de Lorris 
Paris, 1884 





BIBL 


RretscHEL, S., Marki 
lichen Verhdltniss 
Leipzig, 1897 
Das Burggrafenan 
Leipzig, 1905 
Die civitas auf deu 
Leipzig, 1894 

Rounp, J. H., “The Ca. 
quest,” Archaeologi 

Soum, R., Die Entstehu 
WESENS 
Leipzig, 1890 

VANDERKINDERE, L., “La } 
lution constitutionelle 
Annales deVEst et dul 
“La notion juridique de , 
tin del Academie de Belg: 
tres, 1906 

VANDER Linpen, H., Les gildes , 
les Pays-Bas au Moyen- age 
Ghent, 1896 

Wauters, A., Del’ origine des premier 
ments des libertés communales en . 
Brussels, 1869 


The numerous monographs devoted, in. 
country, to the particular history of a city muse 
course also be consulted. A list of them can be 
found in the national bibliographies and especial- — 
ly, for England, in the Bibliography of British 
Municipal History of Charles Gross. 


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